The Struggle To Design A Tween Room
There's a few things that happens with girls when they're eleven years old.
They grow exponentially taller, they get fuller figures, they're always
snacking, and they start to form opinions about their personal style.
Kids Bedroom Design
It's that last one that has resulted in us being at a standstill with Chloe's
bedroom for the last year and a half. When we moved into this house, we had a
7 year old and now we have a young lady on the cusp of 12. Tastes are
changing, the rest of our home has been updated, so it's been difficult to
determine what this room wants to be and how it fits in.
Until now! We're finally tackling this problem room once and for all and
getting it to a place where my tween - and I - are happy with it.
From Girl's Room To Tween Room
I've never fully shown this room on the blog, because, let's be honest, it's not my best design work. But this is a problem many of us face.
How do you create a room that kids and parents will love?
How do you work with the furniture that you have?
Or when do you decide it's time to make more drastic changes?
Kids rooms are challenging because the way they look and function needs to
change over a relatively short amount of time. Change is inevitable and
while you might constantly be buying new clothes for your growing kid, you
don't want to have to be buying new furniture all the time.
Unlike your own bedroom where you've pretty much determined what you like
and don't like and create a room just the way you want, there's two clients
to please with kids rooms. Kids and parents often have different ideas of
what's stylish, what paint colours are attractive, and what should be on the
walls. How do find that common ground?
Perhaps sensing the chaos in her environment, Chloe insisted on a white
Christmas tree in her room that year. No colourful ornaments, no crazy
lights... just... white.
So what do you have when you combine kid-sized furniture + coastal
elements + accessories inspired by TikTok and YouTube videos???
I'm not one to force my design opinions on Chloe and decorate her room
without her input and preferences in mind (though this process would go
much easier if I did!). So let me share how we're approaching this
co-designed space.
This was the state of Chloe's bedroom the first year after we moved.
We didn't make any drastic changes and essentially just moved our old
furniture in. The lavender and white walls were inherited from the
previous owners (they had a fondness for
bold primary paint colours).
Our old basement rug, Chloe's Pottery Barn kids bed and desk, and a
storage ottoman added the needed function but did nothing for the
style of this room. We planned to update her room in the first year so
we weren't concerned with things looking a bit chaotic in the
meantime.
A few things started to fall apart over time. Namely, the bifold doors
on her closet. This was true for all of our closets! Apparently, we're
tough on our closet doors because we've replaced them all over the last
three years.
Knowing that we couldn't live like this for long, we began redoing this
room in earnest in late summer of 2019.
A Girl's Bedroom - Version 1.0
Our first task was to cover up those lavender walls with something much
more soothing. Going for a coastal look in this room, we decided on
Bluestem Blue Faux Grasscloth wallpaper.
We decided to wallpaper three walls and keep the remaining fourth wall
(which is coved and wraps around the ceiling) painted white. This
wallpaper is what I deem
the easiest wallpaper to install for beginners
and was super quick to put up.
We also dealt with that unsightly closet too and built in an IKEA PAX closet organizer. We perfected our method of
installing bifold closet doors and soon this room was feeling much more neat and organized.
Which takes us to where we are today. Let me show you around:
Let's call this the awkward "in between" years.
As things progressed with this room, Chloe grew up and started to have
more opinions about how it should be decorated. Can you feel the design
drama brewing??
So what changes have we made so far? Let me tell you about the changes
Sean and I made... and in italics tell you the changes that Chloe has
made alongside!
- We changed the layout and placed the bed in the centre of the left side wall, with a side table originally to the right of the bed. Chloe said she felt like she was falling out of her twin bed, so we moved it right up against the window wall, and moved the side table to the left of the bed
- We moved her desk to the opposite wall. She needed additional space for books and her pet hamster's food and accessories so we added a bookcase too
- We changed out her old Pottery Barn Kids chandelier for this breezy blue beaded pendant. Chloe insisted on adding white fairy lights as well
- We added a patterned rug that had to be a specific size so it wouldn't impede with the moving in and out of her desk chair
- The aforementioned faux grasscloth wallpaper got trendy artificial vines on top. I do have to admit it made for a great Zoom background when Chloe was remote learning!
Luckily, the organized closet has stayed essentially the same. A LOT of
the clothes have been outgrown (did I mention that she's taller than me
now?), but what remains, she generally keeps hung up or folded nicely.
A few other items were added like the curtains and
bamboo roman shade. The beach print is a photo I took on our Hawaiian vacation, and
the
grid duvet cover was Chloe's request for her last birthday.
A MESS.
Unsurprisingly, Chloe has rejected this hodge-podge of a room and has
escaped to this most serene and calm space instead:
That's right... for the last year, my daughter has basically been
sleeping in
our guest bedroom. With its larger double bed, abundant light, and cohesive design, this
room is calm and peaceful.
But I want my guest bedroom back!
And I want my daughter sleeping in her own room!
So this tween bedroom needs to be fixed ASAP. It needs a bigger bed. It
needs a more effective layout. It needs less TikTok trends and more well
thought out design.
And that's what we're going to do. Next week I'll share the revamped
design plan. I'm excited to share because the bed arrived and it's
looking even better than we hoped!
Now tell me... do you struggle with designing your kids rooms? Do they
get a say in what goes in their space?
0 comments