Friday, 1 September 2017
Eventually, kids get to an age where they want to feel grown up, be grown up, and be treated like an adult. They start to re-evaluate their possessions and whether they would be deemed ‘babyish’ or not.
It is inevitable that they will want their room to reflect their desire to be grown up, and why shouldn’t they? Chances are their bedroom currently sports the design they wanted when they were around 6, which isn’t in line with what they want now they’re heading into their teens.
We’re going to focus on decorating ideas for a teenage boy’s room, and how to make sure he has a space that he’d be eager to show off to his friends.
Keeping the colour pallet darker will help achieve a more mature and masculine appearance for your son’s bedroom. For the walls, choose colours such as blues, greens, or greys, again keeping them on the darker end of the scale.
Darker shades add the sense of maturity, as opposed to bedrooms for younger children that are usually a wash of bright colours. If you’re worried about the room looking too dark, simply choose a shade that isn’t too close to black. If you’re avoiding lots of bright colours, you’ll still achieve that grown up look.
A more controlled pallet has the bonus of helping your son feel focused and relaxed in his newly decorated space.
Going on from the last point, an all dark colour scheme may not entirely suit your son’s vision for his room or his personality. Therefore, adding something a bit brighter may be needed.
The trick is to use a saturated, rich colour, such as orange or green, to accent the room. The key word here is 'accent', as you don’t want lots of bright colours to take over the room. Lighter colours can detract from the overall effect, so it is best to avoid them. The only exception would be white, as this plays well off any colour scheme.
These accents of colour can be incorporated with furnishings, such as lamps, pillows and rugs. You could take it one step further and create an accent wall instead, and tone back other items of the same colour in the room. This way, the colour won’t become overpowering. Remember; the goal is to create a mature looking space for your son.
You might be thinking that with all these dark colours, your son’s room will end up looking dingy. This may be the case if it has poor natural light. Another easy way to counter this is by adding in wooden elements in the form of furniture or decorations.
An obvious, yet practical method would be the inclusion of a wooden desk. Having somewhere for your son to work is vital, especially as he will have important school work to do. A desk will provide necessary work/home separation in his bedroom, helping to make focusing easier.
Other ideas would be installing wooden shelving or even a wooden headboard. You can use the material as small accents or larger themes for furniture.
Industrial styling suits many teen’s spaces, but works the best when kept as a subtle theme. Going too far with it could end up resulting in a room that looks more like a warehouse instead of a bedroom.
This theme is characterised by ‘unfinished’ looking pieces. Think metal work showing, bare walls, and rougher surfaces.
An easy way to hint at this theme is to include wood and metal in your furniture choices. For example, choose a desk with a wooden top and metal hairpin legs paired with a metal desk chair. Pick a metal bed frame and place it up against a bare brick wall. If stripping the plaster off your wall doesn’t sound ideal, use a brick wallpaper instead.
You can even tie this theme into your lighting choices, with metal desk lamps and industrial looking ceiling lights.
If you want to add an element of ‘cool’ to your son’s room, the answer comes in the form of LED strip lights. They come in various lengths, colours and settings. Some LED strip lights have the option to change colours, are dimmable, and have other settings similar to Christmas lights.
Your options with these lights are endless, but we’ll go over some of the most popular ways to use them.
Many teen boys who enjoy their PC gaming will install LED’s around the edge of their desk, resulting in a cool, high-tech look to their space. Using colours like blue or green tend to look the best. If your son prefers to game on a PlayStation or Xbox, instead the strip lights can be fitted around the edge of his TV for a cool backlit effect.
Are they not into gaming? No problem! Instead, put the lights around the edge of the back of their bed’s headboard. This again gives a slick looking backlight. Go one step further and add them to the bottom of your son’s bed too.
