Designing a teen bedroom on a budget
- EK Wills
- Nov 3, 2018
- 3 min read
Updated: Nov 4, 2018
By EK Wills
Not every teen has an eye for design and knows exactly what they want.
When my teen came to me unsure of how she wanted to design her bedroom, she was unhappy with everything.
She didn’t know what she wanted but it wasn’t what she had.
This is not unusual for teenagers so parents are pretty used to dealing with such dilemmas, although not always sure of what to do about it.
Luckily, I drew on my previous experience as an art director and designer to suggest creating a mood board.
A mood board is a collection of different images that you find of style, colour, specific inspiration and even furniture or decoration ideas.
Images can be taken from anywhere: Ikea catalogues, magazines, the Sunday liftout pages or the internet such as pinterest.
We googled ‘teen bedroom’ then progressed to ‘cosy aesthetic’ and ‘warm palette’ to see where it led us.
The idea is to piece together the jumble in your head to see if anything tangible comes from it. We ended up with some images that we labeled with text to indicate what it was about each picture that she liked. It could be the ‘style’ or ‘rugs’ or ‘colours’, we labeled each one.
In the end, we discovered that she likes soft fabrics, draped over posters on a bed. She also identified a ‘messy order’ of photos and pictures on the wall and a mantel of objects that reflects her interests.
Some items could be rearranged and some other items could be gathered from around the house.
The cushions we have, that she doesn’t like the colour of, she decided she could drape with a throw or fabric she could choose.
She also likes plants so she can decide if she wants to look after them or get artificial ones.
This was the start point for her to transform her room.
Now the next step is to go to op shops or lower end stores that could have new items that weren’t going to break her budget and to take the printed mood board as reference. Then if she sees something she is not sure about, she can refer to her images to see if it is in keeping with the style or impression of what she would like to achieve in the end.
We also have the benefit of Christmas around the corner so if there are big ticket items she would like to obtain as feature furniture pieces then we can help. But it doesn’t have to break the bank because there are so many options for deals and bargains. It could be that Gumtree or eBay has a second hand poster bed or Ikea has the right rug to complement her room.
Similarly, if you or your partner are handy, then maybe you can create something in the desired style. For example, our teen wanted to put photos on the entire wall using blue tac. Instead of possible marks or paint peeling, we decided we could put a couple of painted timber strips vertically on the wall and she could string the photos between them back and forth several times pegging them up.
Now she can start to realize the aesthetic she likes because she has a more complete picture of what it entails. And so does Santa.
What have you done for your teen’s bedroom?
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