HOW TO DECORATE TEENAGE BEDROOMS

BY LISA WOODRUFF

Last summer, I wanted to know how to decorate teenage bedrooms since both of mine were now teens.

I LOVE to redecorate my kid’s rooms. As a child, I would CONSTANTLY reorganize the furniture in my room. My mom re-wallpapered my room a few different times and I LOVED it!

When we moved into our home 19 years ago, I set out to organize and decorate each space. And a few, like the kitchen, have been redecorated several times. But for the most part, the rooms have stayed the same over the last decade except for the kids’ rooms.

My kiddos were 14 and 15 and I think this was the 4th or 5th time I had redecorated each of their rooms. I took a WHOLE 9 days and worked from sun up to sun down to bring my kiddo’s bedrooms into their teenage years.

Abby

before

And a little more recent before picture:

Abby has more style in her pinky than I do in my whole body. She knew EXACTLY what she wanted in her new room. She used her birthday money at IKEA to get new bedding and a display case for all her makeup.

I needed to start with the ceiling. Our neighbor Jonie had painted clouds on her ceiling when she was 2. It was SO hard for me to paint over those clouds!

I couldn’t believe how much a freshly painted white ceiling would brighten up the room! I also painted the fan white. I started to take it down and it was a nightmare! So I just painted it. 🙂

Day One… done!

The next few days I painted like crazy and assembled IKEA furniture. 🙂

I love how bright and teenagery this blue is. It would not have worked without the white furniture!

Abby LOVES her vanity cabinet and makes GREAT use of it!

I had already taken her closet door off and put the shelving in a several years ago, so I added a few hooks and reorganized the items inside.

Hunter

No, I didn’t do a room for Hunter, but he did “help” with Abby’s room. Luckily, a wet washcloth took that paint right off.

And when Hunter wasn’t “helping” paint, she was talking to the gerbil. 🙂

My mom had each of the kids for the 5 days it took me to redecorate their rooms. So on Day 5, I washed all the coffee mugs and drove to meet my mom and swap kids.

Joey

I didn’t redecorate Joey’s room the last time I did Abby’s because he still liked the custom camo walls I had done for him.

His room was BUSY and BRIGHT. The Bengals orange had worn out it’s welcome and he was BEGGING me to repaint his room.

Joey is an artist and I do not mind my kid’s decorating their walls. Their room is THEIR room. 🙂 I get the rest of the house!

I used a TON of spackle in Joeys room from all the pushpin art he had displayed over the years.

And I HATED painting over that camo!

Joey is a perfectionist, an artist, and a minimalist. Finding a style for his room took us months. I found this design on Pinterest and set out to recreate it.

I love how the stripes turned out, but they took a WHOLE day to do!

Joey got a new IKEA addition and I acquiesced to moving his gaming system permanently into his room. I know, I know.

When I took out Abby’s closet shelves and made her closet look like a walk in closet a few years ago, Joey wasn’t interested. But since he was out of town, I did the transformation on his closet this time.

I love how open this makes a small standard closet and how you can sort clothes. On the bottom are school clothes and on the top are casual clothes.

I also took Joey’s closet door off and he LOVES that!

A RARE picture of Joey. 🙂

So there you have it. I have decided that the summer is definitely the only time I have to do bigger home projects like this. I can’t believe how LONG it is taking me to do these projects like the kid’s rooms and before that the kid’s bath. Good thing we aren’t moving! 🙂