In 2005, Trine Andersen moved into a new house and went looking for wallpaper. Not just any wallpaper — the right one. Something that felt considered and alive, that matched the home she was trying to create rather than the rooms she had left behind. She looked everywhere and found nothing. So she made her own.

Ten designs. One trade fair. A handful of printouts, and a name borrowed from her grandmother's highest compliment — ferm på fingrene, meaning skilled with the hands, good with the fingers. From that single roll of wallpaper and that very specific frustration, Ferm Living was born.

Nearly twenty years later, the company has grown from a one-woman graphic design agency in Aarhus into one of the most respected design houses in Denmark, with products in 68 countries and a children's collection that has found its way into some of the most carefully considered nurseries and bedrooms in the world. The clarity of that original idea — make what you cannot find, make it well, make it for keeps — has not shifted.

What Ferm Living Actually Is

There is a tendency to reach for the word Scandinavian and stop there. Ferm Living is Danish, which is a more specific thing. Danish design has a particular character that is not quite the same as Swedish minimalism or Norwegian restraint — it is warmer, a little more playful, more willing to add what Trine once called a bit of sparkle. It is still clean. It is still considered. But it is not cold.

The Ferm Living aesthetic sits at the intersection of graphic design and interior objects — which makes sense, because that is exactly where Trine started. The patterns are bold without being loud. The colour palette runs from ebony to ivory with careful stops at ochre, sage, rust, and soft blush in between. The materials are what Ferm Living calls honest ones: organic cotton, FSC-certified wood, porcelain, linen, recycled yarns. Things that craftspeople have used for centuries because they work, and that happen to age well rather than poorly.

The children's collection — Ferm Living Kids — brings all of this into the rooms where children actually live. Not a sanitised or simplified version of the adult range, but the same design language applied to furniture, textiles, storage, and objects that need to survive real daily life with real children. The pieces are certified where certification matters — GOTS-certified organic cotton for textiles that go near small bodies, FSC-certified wood for furniture that takes weight and impact. They are designed to last beyond the years they are needed, which in practice means they get passed on.

The Bird on the Logo

The small bird on the Ferm Living logo has a story worth knowing. Before the company existed, Trine — mostly for fun — visited a clairvoyant. The clairvoyant described a little bird sitting confused on a branch, not sure which direction to fly. The image stayed with her. When she finally took the leap and started Ferm, the bird found its direction and went straight to the logo. It has been there ever since — a small, slightly knowing reminder that the best things begin with a little uncertainty and a decision to go anyway.

There is something characteristically Danish about this story. The Danes have a word — hygge — for the quality of warmth and ease that comes from being genuinely at home. Ferm Living's entire project is an attempt to make things that contribute to that feeling. Not to impose a style on a room but to offer pieces that help a space become more itself. The children's collection extends this idea into rooms that are chaotic by nature, and asks: what would it feel like if even this room was somewhere you really wanted to be?

What We Stock at Little Paper Planes

We carry Ferm Living because the pieces suit our customers precisely — people who are making considered choices about what goes into a child's room, who care about materials and craft, and who want to still be proud of what they chose in ten years. Here is what we have, and what is worth knowing about each.

The Birdy Bean Bag

A bird-shaped bean bag, designed in collaboration with artist Leise Dich Abrahamsen, made from GOTS-certified organic cotton with recycled polyester padding. It has elongated legs, a plump body and an expressive face — the face is the thing that children go straight to. It is large enough to actually sit in and soft enough to fall asleep against. For a parent, the material story matters: certified organic cotton on a piece that a child will spend a lot of time pressed against. For a child, it is simply a very good bird.

The Braided A-House

A house-shaped basket braided from natural rattan — the kind of storage piece that earns its place in a room by looking as though it belongs rather than as though it was bought to solve a problem. It holds toys, blankets, soft things. It sits beside a bed or in the corner of a play space. It is the Ferm Living approach to storage in a single object: solve the practical problem with something beautiful enough that the solution itself improves the room.

The Roy Merino Wool Teddy

Roy is a teddy bear made from New Zealand merino wool, dressed in a knitted vest and scarf, with a bobble nose and a slightly uncertain expression. He is soft in the way that only merino wool is soft — not the synthetic softness of most plush toys, but the real warmth of a natural fibre that comes from somewhere cold. He is filled with recycled polyester. He is CE-tested. He is the kind of soft toy that a parent chooses knowing it will last, and that a child names within twenty minutes of meeting him.

The Bird Tapestry Blanket

A cotton blanket woven with an abstract bird in flight over a lake — geometric, calm, made in neutral tones that suit a child's room without demanding attention. The Bird Tapestry Blanket has two lives: folded on the end of a bed during the day it is a design object; pulled over a sleeping child at night it is simply a blanket. It can also be hung on a wall with two small nails through the top corners, becoming the kind of considered touch that transforms the feeling of a room without requiring much effort at all.

The Character Stacking Blocks

Ten blocks in geometric shapes and graphic patterns, made from FSC-certified beech wood, on a base with three sticks. Children stack them into characters — absurd, lopsided, entirely their own. The combination logic is deliberately open-ended: there is no right answer, no picture on the box to match. The blocks teach dexterity and spatial thinking in the way that good toys always have, by being interesting enough that a child keeps going. CE-tested. Suitable from three years.

Why It Belongs in This Room

Children's rooms are strange spaces to design. They are asked to do too many things at once — to inspire play and enable sleep, to hold chaos and offer calm, to be exciting enough for a three-year-old and sophisticated enough not to embarrass a twelve-year-old. Most children's furniture solves half this problem by ignoring the other half. It is either playful and disposable, or minimal and cold.

Ferm Living's answer is to treat the child's room as a room in a real home, with the same care and the same standards. The pieces are friendly without being infantile. They hold up. They adapt — the same shelf that held board books will hold novels; the same cushion that was a comfort object will become a reading pillow. The room does not need to be dismantled and rebuilt as the child grows. It just changes what it holds.

This is what makes Ferm Living pieces gifts worth giving. Not just because they are beautiful — though they are — but because they have been thought through to the point where buying one means not having to think about it again for a long time. That is a rare quality in children's things. It is a rarer quality in children's things that also happen to look like this.

Trine Andersen's grandmother would probably recognise the company her granddaughter built. It is well made. It is done with care. It is, in the truest sense of the phrase, ferm på fingrene — good with the fingers. The rooms it furnishes are better for it. The children who grow up in them are, quietly, a little luckier.

Brand history sourced from Ferm Living public documentation and verified interviews with founder Trine Andersen. Product information reflects the current Ferm Living range stocked at Little Paper Planes, Mount Martha.