Boys rooms

John built a shelf system for the basement when it was Anne’s office; he adapted it to store the kids’ toys when the area became a playroom.

Paul spreads out his toys on a rug from Pottery Barn.

In the playroom, built-in casework offers storage for toys. The yellow table was custom-built by the Kristin's father. The clear pendant lights are by Muuto. The "toy zone" is adjacent to the kitchen so that Lowell and Kristin can prepare meals and keep an eye on their yound children, aged three and five. "The residents wanted as little freestanding furniture as possible," Guess says. 'We did a lot of benches, which are made out of plywood so they're fairly inexpensive."

The boys’ playroom is outfitted with a Uten.Silo wall organizer by Dorothee Becker for Vitra and a pair of May Day lamps by Konstantin Grcic for Flos that dangle from a set of Peace hooks by Louise Hederström for Maze.

With white walls, rooms take on the characteristics of their inhabitants, such as in Zoë and Ari’s bedroom with its Ikea shelves of toys, books, and trinkets.

Austin architect J.C. Schmeil converted his family's 1935 bungalow into a spacious modern family home on a modest budget and with tons of ingenuity. A dormer on the south side of the house contains two bedrooms. One of the bedrooms features a reading loft carved out of the attic space above the dining room. The intersection of the gabled roof and the shed dormers allowed us to wrap large windows around each corner, taking advantage of the "borrowed landscape"—treetop views that root the house to its site.

Tom’s compact bedroom feels much larger thanks to interlocking shelves and storage. The plywood bed and surrounding shelving were custom-built by Wilkin and a hired carpenter.

In the home of Dwell founder Lara Hedberg Deam, her child's room features Maija & Kristina Isola's Sola bedding for Marimekko.