If you’ve ever had a teen in your life, you know that a teenager’s bedroom is all about self-expression (and many teens have a lot of it). Adolescence is a time of establishing independence and personal goals, and most teenagers enjoy expressing their sense of self in their own private space.
However, the challenge lies in creatively designing and arranging a lot of big ideas in a smaller space while also maintaining a budget.
To meet these challenges, our designers at Ron Nathan Interiors have a few tricks up our sleeves. If you’re designing or redecorating a teenager’s bedroom, you’ve come to the right place. Read on for tips to get the most from your space and your wallet.
Let Your Teen Take the Lead
Teens spend a lot of time in their bedrooms, so their space should reflect who they are. Begin your project by allowing your teenager to make a wish list of elements they would like in their room. Whether color or functionality or storage is most important to your teen, be sure to involve them in the decision-making from the start.
Accent walls and statement pieces can become a design focus, or your teen may instead want to work with a theme. Your teen may find it more desirable to have an inviting study space rather than a whimsical reading nook. Be sure to nail these elements down by allowing your young person the creativity to design their room the way they want it. That way, getting your teenager’s input is not only practical but is also a way to strengthen your parent-child relationship.
Budget-Friendly Ideas for Small Rooms
Once you and your teen have decided upon a design direction, explore options online—or take a trip to a thrift store to collect inexpensive items that you can re-purpose. Storage and color will likely take priority in a smaller space. It may be helpful to consider the following tips when moving forward with your design.
1. Wall Space
In small rooms, every inch of space matters. The most underutilized areas in any room tend to be the corners, the closet, and the 12 inches of wall space between the top of door frames and the ceiling.
Corners
Corners are tricky to decorate and often get overlooked as a handy place for storage. With a little creativity and ingenuity, corners can become useful and decorative spaces.
Corner shelving is arguably the best solution for small-space storage and décor but can sometimes be difficult to find in stores, especially in custom sizes. Fortunately, even the least crafty individuals among us might find corner shelves relatively simple to build. Bob Vila offers some creative DIY shelving ideas here for just about every corner space.
Clothes racks are a great way to capitalize on corners, and they free up room in the closet as well. Wall-mounted clothes racks might be best for this purpose, but floor racks can also be situated creatively into corner spaces.
Closets
Closet walls provide extra hidden space for additional storage. Purchase inexpensive wall hooks from just about any hardware store to provide a quick way to hang jewelry, accessories, hats, bags, and other small items. Mount small baskets from these hooks where your teen can toss random items like belts or scarves that don’t have a home anywhere else.
Another way to use closet walls for space-saving is to get shoes up off the floor. Install wall pegs from which to hang shoes or use tension rods from which you can hang heeled shoes. If the closet offers enough space, small shelves are an easy way to store shoes as well. This clears up floor space for larger items or small storage bins that your teen can tuck away inside the closet.
Multiple pairs of jeans or slacks can hang from small wall brackets, much like the brackets you see on walls of retail stores. In fact, an excellent way to get some space-saving storage ideas is to visit local retail shops and see how they manage to fit so many items onto their sales floor.
Wall Space Near the Ceiling
The foot or so of space above doorways and windows is probably the least-used opportunity for wall storage. Perimeter shelving in this space provides an excellent location for books, knickknacks, decor, and other small items. Depending on the size of the room, this can add dozens of square feet of storage.
2. Multifunctional Furniture
One of the easiest ways to make the most of your teen’s room is to invest in furniture that serves more than one need at a time. For instance, a daybed with a pull-out mattress trundle can serve as seating space when friends visit after school and also offers additional sleeping spaces for sleepovers.
Similarly, storage headboards and platform beds with drawers underneath can add additional storage. However, if a new bed isn’t in your budget, take heart. You can also modify beds with regular metal frames for extra space using adjustable furniture risers. These come in various shapes and colors and are an affordable way to lift a metal bed frame by several inches to provide more under-bed storage.
Desks are another necessity for many teenagers, but they can be bulky and heavy pieces of furniture. Invest in a fold-down wall desk that practically disappears when it folds back up against the wall. Likewise, a fold-up chair store easily underneath the bed or in the closet and pulled out when needed.
3. Art and Color
Probably the most significant point of contention between teenagers and adults when planning a room makeover is color choice. While teens may opt for room colors that make adults cringe, the key to compromise is flexibility. It is a teenager’s room, after all, and a little freedom of choice can go a long way toward a teen’s growth and self-confidence. Remember, you can always repaint it when you sell the house—or when your teen grows up!
That being said, don’t be afraid of color. Explore ideas using varied paint colors on different walls, saving the boldest colors for behind the bed—which is likely the focal point of the room. Keep in mind that warmer colors like reds and oranges tend to add energy to a room, while cooler colors like blues and purples are more soothing and calming.
If you’re not keen on bold wall colors, a good compromise might be introducing color through artwork or bedding. Allowing a teen to explore bright color palettes using artwork such as paintings, vinyl wall decor, murals, photos, or other wall art can provide for personal expression without taking over the room. Similarly, bright bedding colors and patterns can quickly change the look and feel of a bedroom.
4. Doors
Doors can offer a lot in terms of small space storage. Over-the-door hooks provide a place to hang coats, scarves, towels, hats, or other accessories. Similarly, over-the-door shoe organizers with pockets can store more than just shoes. They are also great catch-all storage locations for school supplies, toiletries, and small electronic devices or chargers.
Doors are also a great spot for hanging lightweight, full-length mirrors. You can find inexpensive mirrors at nearly every retailer and mount them easily with specially designed removable adhesives if you don’t want to subject your doors to nail holes.
5. Lighting
Lighting is one of the easiest and least expensive ways to bring new life to a bedroom dramatically. Trendy lighting is popular right now, and with a little window shopping, you are sure to find plenty of choices to suit any teenager’s style. Tall, elegant floor lamps add a certain sophistication to a room, while contemporary string lights provide a soft glow for a relaxing atmosphere.
For permanent lighting fixtures such as ceiling lights, you’ll want to choose a design that can grow with your teen into young adulthood and further into the future. Options include ceiling fans, flush mount lighting, semi-flush lighting. These will stand the test of time and come in endless colors, shapes, and designs.
If your teen is a reader, writer, or artist, bedside lighting is a useful way to bring personality to a room. End table lamps can bring symmetry to a space, while bulbs are available in many colors and wattages. An additional benefit with lamps is that most have interchangeable shades, so you can update their looks inexpensively and as frequently as desired.
Collaborate With Us
The perfect solution to navigating your teen’s design process is to work with our talented interior designers at Ron Nathan Interiors. We pride ourselves on careful listening and broad expertise. Our goal is to bring exceptional quality and value to our customers through attention to detail. We consider it a privilege to help you meet your design goals and will always respect your budget.
For over four decades, we’ve gained a reputation as a top custom design firm guided by our core values and principles in design. We have a gallery of award-winning designs and offer a hands-on creative process.
To collaborate with our expert designers at Ron Nathan Interior Design in Wyckoff, NJ, please contact us via our website or call 201-666-8185 today.
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