Guest Contributor: Lee K. Crowder | Design Gallery and Model Home Branding Manager, Darling Homes and Taylor Morrison
Ah, the teenager. We’ve all been there, and many of us have a teen or two at home. As you no doubt understand, being a teenager is a time for pulling away from your parents and making your own decisions, defining and expressing yourself and, yes, making mistakes to learn from. But, let’s concentrate on the fun parts of teen-dom today. Let’s help a teenager update and decorate his or her own bedroom.
Parents, guiding a teen to decorate their bedroom should follow a few rules:
- Remember, it’s their space, not yours.
- Your own personal tastes may have to go out the window.
- Let them learn and make decisions of their own.
- As always, it’s best to be patient with a teenager.
Remember, you can have some limitations you want to enforce, but generally they need to feel the room is truly theirs.
Plan the Perfect Room
Getting a teen involved in re-doing their room starts with planning. Suggest they create an “idea board” on Pinterest.com, where they can gather all of the décor ideas they like, kind of an online brainstorming area. During this beginning stage, show them how to develop a spreadsheet using the budget you’ve allotted them. They can research online to see how much the stuff they like costs and go from there, tracking how everything adds up. If the budget doesn’t allow for big-time spending, google RH TEEN for ideas but sites like Wayfair for actual purchasing.
Include a Hang-out Spot
Most likely, your teen’s bedroom is not especially palatial in size. With that in mind, make sure that once all the necessaries are in place they still have room for hanging out with friends. Suggest they forget about a double or queen bed instead go with a day or trundle bed, or even a raised bunk that allows for seating below. Your teen can include a fun sitting area with lounge chairs or bean bag seating.
Teen Expressions
Your teen can express themselves with what they put on the walls. They might love having a chalkboard or writable wall where they can scrawl their ever-changing thoughts and moods. A bulletin board wall or area lets them pin up whatever catches their interest. Creative netting is perfect for displaying photo faves, postcards, achievement certificates, concert tickets and other lightweight memorabilia. Good old shelving is also a good idea for placing framed photos and favorite items.
The Theme’s the Thing
Most teens will want a theme, something that pulls things together. A theme will also inspire décor ideas. A good place to start is defining their passions, whether it’s sports (sports decal art), horses (horse pics), arts and crafts (things they made) or some other hobby. Maybe they’re inspired by reading (a reading hammock) or acting in drama class or community theater (favorite actor portraits). You get the idea. Themes can also simply express feminine frilliness or a masculine man-cave look.
Popular teen bedroom looks include patterned surfaces and fabrics, sleek and modern, funky and eclectic, or retro. They might prefer dark, bright or neutral shades. They might even go for fashionable and chic, or for something you haven’t yet imagined!
Color Outside the Lines
Picking out wall colors is fun, and one of the easiest and least expensive steps in a re-do. This is a good place to suggest but not interfere. Let them go with whatever colors speak to them, whether their choices make you cringe or smile. Don’t be surprised if your teen decides extremes, either bright and contrasting colors or an understated, cool palette. To get their creative juices going, they can explore the possibilities by uploading a photo of their room and playing with an online “painted room” visualizer. Take your teen to the local hardware store to look at paint chips. Get some samples and let them apply each color to small areas of their room. When the “This is it!” moment comes, they’ll be ready to tackle the entire room with the color, or colors, of their choice.
Color Outside the Lines
Picking out wall colors is fun, and one of the easiest and least expensive steps in a re-do. This is a good place to suggest but not interfere. Let them go with whatever colors speak to them, whether their choices make you cringe or smile. Don’t be surprised if your teen decides extremes, either bright and contrasting colors or an understated, cool palette. To get their creative juices going, they can explore the possibilities by uploading a photo of their room and playing with an online “painted room” visualizer. Take your teen to the local hardware store to look at paint chips. Get some samples and let them apply each color to small areas of their room. When the “This is it!” moment comes, they’ll be ready to tackle the entire room with the color, or colors, of their choice.
Start with a Blank Canvas
Give your teen the gift of a white canvas to “paint” on. You can subtly apply some parental influence while still giving them some room to play with. Say, for example, your teen has picked a fun, bold color or two. Once the room is painted you purchase some furniture but leave the bedding white. You also buy framed white canvases to hang. Once your teen has lived with this awhile, let them choose the bedding and accent pillows and fill the frames as they please, maybe with their own art and collage creations. You get to make some more adult choices for the room and they get to add their own decorative flair.
What if You Hate It?
Okay, the common parental concern is that they might find their teen’s choices result in a bedroom you hate. It might look nothing like the rest of the home you’ve carefully furnished and accessorized. But style that fits into anything, but your teen’s preferences is likely not going to fly. More than at any time of life, being a teenager is for learning to make decisions, expressing yourself and to explore so that you can grow into being your authentic self.
If you want a happy teen (who might be easier to co-exist with!), you’ll probably just have to let it go. Let them express themselves the way they love most and know you can always shut the door!
The Taylor Morrison Approach
One thing we’ve gotten to know about interior design at Taylor Morrison is that setting the tone matters. There are a lot of variables to think about and decisions to make. We have our model homes professionally decorated at all of our communities throughout the country. Every region has its own flair for design. In the Austin area, our new homes in Bee Cave are probably going to have a different flavor than, say, a vacation house in Orlando.
Learn more about Taylor Morrison, our thoughts about quality, and our sense of social responsibility and commitment to energy efficiency. We can even give you tips about maintaining your home throughout the year. Let us know if we can help you in your new-home search!
