Teen Rooms

I have an older friend who raised her children during the 60′s. She told me a funny story about her teenage daughter personalizing her room by hanging balls of aluminum foil all around her canopy bed. My friend said she tore it all down – frightened that her daughter was turning into a hippy.

Yikes! It’s Hippies!

Likewise, when my college roommate was a teen, her room was professionally decorated to the nines – complete with matching pink pencils. She was never allowed to change or move anything, much less actually use those pink pencils. On her wedding day they were still in the pink pencil holder on her desk.

She grew to hate it.

My point? Decorating a Teen room has its own set of guidelines. Teenagers are busy finding themselves, figuring out who they are, what kind of music they like, what sort of people they hang out with, what style of clothes they’ll wear, etc. Are you going to be a Goth or a Cheerleader? A jock or in school play?

It’s part of something we all have to go through – defining ourselves and separating from our parents’ identities. This is why it’s universal to find teen rooms filled with posters, magazine clippings and even tin foil all over the place. They’re saying, “This is my space, this is who I am, and this is what I like.”

What’s that got to do with decorating? For one, it means that if you want your teen’s room to look like it belongs in a magazine, you’re fighting a losing battle. For another, it means really understanding what a teen’s bedroom is. My college roommate’s parents thought it was just a bedroom. But teen rooms are really a combination laboratory and billboard.

So how do you make the room look great, but still give them room to express themselves? Here are some ideas. Since they’re going to want to put up pictures of the stuff they like anyway, (see photo below)…

Actual teenager’s bedroom.

… make the decorations part of the decor.

I did this for a teenage boy’s room, which was featured in KidSpace. I installed sheets of perforated, galvanized steel from McNichols. They precut the steel so that all the installer had to do was frame it out. It’s magnetic, so the teenager in question could display his current passions using magnets, rather than taping photos to the wall. It also allows a teen to customize the look easily. Here’s what it looked like soon after it was completed.

A 13 year-old’s room.

Here’s the same room a few years down the road. It’s evolved quite a bit.

Same teen’s room two years later.

There are all sorts of customizable materials out there. They make a design statement all by themselves. Memerase makes whiteboard “wallpaper” that comes in different colors, including black. What teen wouldn’t love that? Of course, there’s blackboard paint, too. You could also consider mounting a push-pinnable surface to the wall. The one pictured, below, is from Robin Reigi. It comes in 2′ x 4′ black or white acoustical (they can play their music loud!) panels.

Memerase in white and black, Acoustical panels from Robin Reigi, and Steel from McNichols.

One last tip: come to an agreement as to what part of your teen’s room is fair game for customization. In the photo, below, it was the closet door for stickers and the shades for a pin collection. Giving Teens an easy way to customize their rooms is a good way to approach the decoration. You provide the bones. Let them add the muscle and skin.

Do you have a good teen decorating tip, or a fond decorating memory/nightmare from your own teen years? Why not share it with all of us?