I am really excited to be introducing the very first room from our Modern Vintage Home, the teen bedroom. The room is decorated in vintage style, with lots of beautiful wood work and stunning cement floors.
Though the owners would love to retain the charming feel, all that woodwork in a very small room makes it look heavy and cramped. Our teens, a boy and a girl, are looking for a fresher, airier look with well planned work and storage areas.
To give you a better idea of what I’m talking about, let’s look at what we have.
The Bed Wall:
As you enter the room, the first thing you see is this. You have a queen sized bed fit into an entire wall of wooden paneling and shelving. The door you see to the right of the bed leads to the bathroom. And cut off from this photograph, to the right of the bathroom door, is another storage cupboard.
The cubbies are great for display and do take care of a lot of our teens’ books.
(If you look at the bottom right corner of the pic, you’ll also get a glimpse of the beautiful floor!)
This would probably work really well in a bigger room. But just opposite our bed we have this.
The Wardrobe Wall:
Opposite the bed is this entire wall of wardrobes. You can see how beautifully crafted they are. You can also see that I couldn’t get the entire wardrobe in my photograph standing near the head of the bed, because the distance between the two is too little.
So we have a small sized room with the bed positioned between two walls of wood. But wait, there is more.
The Study Wall:
This room wasn’t designed for kids originally and so had no provision for a study area. Our teens had to buy an additional study desk and put it against the only free wall in the room, right along the entrance. They also added on a mirror to serve as a dressing area for them.
This makes our third wall full of furniture too. That leaves our fourth wall…
The Window Wall:
We have a big sized window here giving us a fair share of natural light. Except that the dark furniture sucks out a lot of the light. Notice the wooden drawers below the window too?
So what are we planning to do about it?
The Plan:
Our first step will be to remove all the storage that we don’t need. This means we remove all the wooden cubbies all around the bed and open up that space.
Our second step will be to reorganise the storage that we do need. For instance, the storage cupboard to the right of the bathroom door. We will remove it from that wall and organise it, along with the study table, along the entrance wall. We loved how the study and storage fit in seamlessly with each other in this pic.
This also means, that instead of having storage along all 4 walls of the room, we have it only along 2 walls.
Our third step will be to minimise the impact of the storage we can’t move. The biggest piece here, being our large wardrobe.
We were very worried about how heavy this looks. It doesn’t make sense to remove such a beautifully crafted piece of furniture, especially when we do need all that storage space. This pic inspired our solution.
The large wardrobe looks much lighter here because of its colour. Our plan then, is to finish our existing wardrobe in white. We will also do the same for the storage below the window, making them both easier on the eye.
Which leaves us with the dressing area for this room. We loved the idea of using a full length mirror beside the bed for dressing.
Only instead of a plant, we’ll use a table in front of it that works as a bedside cum dressing table.
Teen Bedroom Vibes:
Which leaves us with the finishes. We do want to give a younger vibe to this room to help our teens feel at home. Yet we do want it to fit in with the vintage vibes of the home as a whole.
Our teens themselves came up with a solution to this decor dilemma. They asked for a newspaper print wallpaper in their room.
Isn’t that just the perfect way to bridge the new with the old? The vintage vibes of the newspaper, with the modern touch of black and white which would work as great colours for a teen bedroom.
Another option along the same lines would be to use a world map wallpaper.
The colours we use will depend on the wallpaper we finally select. In my head though, I can see black and white playing a predominant part, with maybe a hint of blue to go with that beautiful floor.
So that is where we are on our teen bedroom makeover and I am really looking forward to the end result.
I have designed rooms for adults before, and rooms for little kids. This is my first one for teens, and every first always adds its own excitement.
I will definitely be back with the reveal soon. Remember to sign up here so that you don’t miss it!
Until next time,
Wow
🙂