Teen Bedroom Makeover : Making Plans

This has been a long time coming, as our soon to be 13-year-old daughter Nia, has needed a complete bedroom makeover for a looong time.  We’ve had a small flood (eek!) which effected her walls and furniture, many spills on the carpet and even the walls, and the room was looking generally tired. This would take more than just redecorating!  She was also ready for a change, Nia and I have different tastes, and I actually like the idea of her expressing herself.  Its her room, so now she’s older she should have more of a say in the way it’s decorated.

So let me show you how the room looked before :

1. Messy

2. Disorganised

3. Cluttered

I think the thing about this bedroom  is that even though it is the second largest bedroom in our house (after the master) it was always untidy, and felt crowded because of the amount of ‘stuff’ Nia has. We’ve done big de-clutters and even then it always seems to look the same.  She doesn’t really have much storage space, especially hidden storage.  Even the double fitted wardrobes were packed full of not only clothing but games, bedding and everything we couldn’t squeeze into other places in the room.

We’d run out of room for long items like winter coats and bulky ones like bags, so she was using a hat stand to keep those on, which just added to the messy state I think. Her desk was great, but too big for the room really, and was being used as more of a dumping ground.  The same could be said of her book shelf.  We have always encouraged our girls to have lots of books around them, but oh my it had gotten a little silly on this bookshelf, with all of the books at least two deep, coupled with toiletries and odd and ends!

Now I was very, VERY fortunate to have been offered bedroom furniture from two different companies.  Hammonds were going to send their top bedroom designer to us, so that we could come up with a an interesting fitted bedroom furniture design that incorporated a lot more storage, was stylish and young but that was going to last us many years because of the design and style.

Our designer Steve at first chatted about the process, then Nia, Steve and I went upstairs so he could talk us through his ideas, and for him to measure up.  I was amazed how different his ideas were to ours, he really took the room in a different (and better) direction that we could have ever taken it. We spent some time looking at the many designs the company had to offer.  Nia wanted something very different, modern in style, but didn’t want white (which would have been the way I would have gone in such a small room) she wanted a softer warmer look for her room.

Here is the design that Steve came up with :

Here are the colours and bedroom furniture finishes.

 

We went about this process slightly differently, so it was now that we had our designs that we started to think about making a moodboard.

Long gone are the days when her favourite colour was pink or that awkward period when she wanted a completely black bedroom – phew! She wants to experiment though with a darker palate of colours, with teal or turquoise blue mixed with a lighter more neutral shades and maybe grey? I wasn’t sure, but I loved her ideas, as we worked more on the project, it seemed to come together.  A budding interiors blogger I think!

Here is the mood board that we came up with together:

 

I’m going to talk in more details about some of the companies and products that we used in the final reveal but wanted to mention here the main companies that had inspired the look.

Bedroom Furniture : Hammonds

Bed : Button & Sprung

Flooring : Harvey Maria

Blind : Web-Blinds

Fabric : Blendworth

We are just waiting for the decorating to be completed, we have ordered some bespoke wallpaper from Love Maps On (which I am very excited about) and then we should be ready to do the final reveal. Its looking really good at the moment, much more grown up, smarter, and far less cluttered, but we do need to add some of Nia’s own things in there, to make sure it keeps with her personality.

Next week, should be the next update.