UNC Tar Heels Room for Lola - Dear Lillie Studio

Well, we are just about finished with Lola’s UNC Tar Heels room so thought we would share it along with all of the details and source information. I’m still waiting on one pillow (which at this point I think may have gotten lost in transit because it was supposed to be here a while ago) and then a rug. I haven’t decided on a rug yet, though, so for now we just brought up the one from our library because we had it layered on top of another one. Otherwise though, her room is pretty much finished.

Lola has always had strong opinions on what she wants her room to look like but the one consistent thing in just about all of her rooms is the color blue. Several of her rooms we used more a of a royal blue (as you can see in this cute one with the puppy wallpaper here and this one with the buffalo check wallpaper here) and her last room was a much darker blue which you can see here, where the main focus was her shoe wall. (You can see all of the final photos of that house in this post here). And then this one we are going with a lighter Carolina blue.

As with pretty much all the rooms in this house we are starting with a pretty basic gray box:

But with some paint, a few DIY projects and some focal pieces (like the light fixture and the NC sign) we were able to give it more personality and make it feel more like her:

She loves sports so you can see a mix of sports she enjoys throughout the room from basketball, golf, tennis, and football to her new favorite which is lacrosse. And although she used to be our little Duke fan, I think we have finally won her over to the Carolina side. Haha!

We’ve got some bins in our basement with some of my husband’s old Carolina Basketball jerseys so we decided to pull one home and one away one out and hang that on one wall along with the basketball hoop I made for her years ago, when she was only four years old, (you can see it here in this post). It has made it’s way with us through seven houses but it was only ever in her bedroom in that first house because I quickly regretted the sound of a real basketball dribbling on the floors of her bedroom and hitting the wall – haha! So in every house since then it’s either been in a bonus room, the garage or basement. It made it’s way back into her room in this house under the condition she doesn’t use a real basketball, just the little ones. Then next to that I used some holders I found on Amazon to set her lacrosse stick and a ball on. It was designed for a baseball and bat but works fine for lacrosse as well! And I added a UNC pennant to that wall as well. I hung a vintage tennis racket on the little wall that kind of juts out right when you walk into her room. We found it at an antique shop but you can find them here as well.

Here’s a little video of the process:

For the wall between her windows we decided to paint the Carolina Argyle pattern onto he wall to add some interest. You can see how we did that saved in our instagram highlights here. Then I added some ball holders that we’ve used in our last few houses and added three balls that all had signatures on them (two basketball and one football).

I think her favorite part of the room is the light up North Carolina sign on the wall behind her bed. I was a little nervous about ordering it but after reading all the reviews decided to go for it and it arrived very quickly and is really cool. I’d definitely order from them again. It has three levels of brightness but we only ever use the lowest level because the next two are really bright. We ordered it when it was on sale (it’s on sale for 50% off I think for a couple more days) and went with the 31″ by 25″ size. I didn’t like the idea of seeing the cord dangling from the wall so I decided to build a little wood slat wall behind the bed using 1 by 2 pine boards (stained Golden Oak) and then just tucked the cord into that so you don’t see it!

We’ve used Beddy’s on most of Lillie and Lola’s beds over the years (and on many clients rooms too!) and they are the absolute best! Lola’s first request when we moved in was to get a Beddy’s for her new daybed. We went with the Charleston style one and truly cannot say enough good things about Beddy’s. They are such a game changer! You can use the code DEARLILLIE for 20% off your Beddy’s order!

She got this little basketball stuffed animal while we were in NYC over Thanksgiving break and it’s so cute! They have other sports too like soccer, baseball, golf, tennis and football which you can find here.

We got these chairs for both girls rooms when we first moved in and they love them. My husband and I have sat in them quite a few times too and can’t get over how comfortable they are! Then we added a little side table and Lola likes to have a little fan in her room so we found this cute little retro style one.