Over the last few weeks, we’ve talked about a few different aspects of designing rooms for children, including the importance of storage, and how to compromise with your strong-headed kids. This week, we’re covering my oldest daughter Caroline’s room, and talking about designing rooms for the teen years. Designing a room that your kids will be happy with throughout this tumultuous period is one of the most difficult tasks of designing for kids. With this in mind, I wanted to talk about the decisions that we made, and how we plan to keep updating the space!

Caroline is almost 12, and honestly, designing a room that she would be happy with for the next 5 or 6 years felt impossible. How do you design a space that fits a person when that person is growing up and changing so quickly? The first decision that we made was about the color palette. As with my other girl’s rooms, we wanted to have a fairly neutral color palette. Even if you want to have your younger children’s spaces be more colorful, I recommend using a neutral palette as a foundation for older kid’s rooms. We’ve talked in past blog posts about having a neutral or classic foundation, and then being more colorful with accessories and art. That way, if your child loves bright pink or bright green for a few years, you’re not stuck with an overly bright space as they mature and change.

With teen rooms especially, it’s important to balance youthfulness and sophistication. Teens want to feel more grown up, and have a space that reflects that, while still feeling young and cool. Having the furniture in the room be more classic, while having fun with the less expensive items helps strike that balance. Right now, I feel like Caroline’s room is still not quite done. We have the classic and neutral foundation, but I do want to add more personal touches, to make the space truly her own.

Once we had our color palette in place, we considered how Caroline would utilize her room. In addition to sleeping and having her own space, I knew that we would need a place to store her belongings (I talked more about storage in this blog post), a place to study, and a place to hang out with her friends. For combined storage and a place to study, we chose this desk from Crate & Kids, and we have loved it so far. As Caroline continues in middle school and then on to high school, this desk is going to be getting a lot of use.

Instead of choosing a particular pattern or color for her room, we wanted the wow factor of the space to be the drapes around her bed. Caroline wanted her room to feel like a grown-up fort, and these drapes definitely achieve that goal. Together with Geeta from Uptown Drapes, we figured out that we could just use ceiling curtain rods and four sets of drapes to achieve the look that we wanted. Honestly, I wish I had done it in my own room. The privacy and quiet of the surrounding curtains makes for a more restful sleep, I’ve already slept in her bed three times!

Get the curtain look for your space

If you or your kids want to create a canopy bed with curtains instead of an actual canopy bed, Apartment Therapy has some great ideas for you here.

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