Playroom Portraits

Our little playroom is the heart of our NYC apartment. Our 3 girls share a bedroom, but spend the majority of their time at home playing in this room! When selecting artwork for the space, we wanted to include large playroom portraits of each of the girls.

Several years ago we hung large photos of Mabel and Matilda. These playroom portraits captured the girls taking some of their first steps during the week they each turned 1 year old. During the week of Margaret’s 1st birthday, we captured photos of some of her first steps also. We updated the gallery wall in the playroom to include her new portrait!

Playroom Layout

We live in a railroad-style apartment, with a series of rooms that connect to one another in a long line, like train cars. In the middle of our apartment, we have a 14ft by 7ft wide room that we’ve turned into a playroom for the girls. We removed the door that separated the playroom from the living room and added a baby gate. This baby gate helps to separate Margaret from her sisters when the older girls are playing with play sets that have small pieces.

Playroom Setup

The playroom sets the girls up for hours of imaginative play each day. Their small playroom has no storage cabinets or closets, so we keep a few large items out, and everything else is stored in the toy rotation closet. We installed two shelves along one of the walls as a table and play surface. We also added three chairs to the space, one of which we found as a “Trash to Treasure” find!

Frames and Prints

Our gallery wall was inspired by a blog from “Chris Loves Julia”. They shared that inexpensive engineering prints can be turned into modern, large-scale portraits! We chose to purchase 24 x 36 inch Craig Frames (also available in a set of 2). These have a modern wood look and complement a large black and white photo. Then it was time to choose photos and print!

First I edited color photos of the girls and turned each of them into black and white. Then I increased the level of exposure and added additional contrast. This technique helps improve the quality of the printing. Then I headed to Staples to print them. When printing the photos, we had the option of printing on large-scale copy paper or poster paper. Printing on large-scale copy paper is a fraction of the cost of printing on poster paper. We printed each of the 24 x 36 inch photos for our gallery wall for less than $5 per sheet.

Our Playroom Portrait Wall is now complete!

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