Decorate Your Room As a Kid
No matter how old we are, making sure our personal space looks and feels good to us is important, and there's no space more personal than our own bedrooms. As we grow, we develop our own sense of what cool, stylish and comforting means, and that applies to our bedroom as well. We can create a bedroom that pleases our sense of style, and reflects a part of who we are.
Contents
Steps
- Map it out! Take out a piece of graph paper, and find exactly where the permanent things are (like doors, windows, closets) and map them out, in scale. You can use something like 4 little squares = a foot.
- Draw the floor plan first. Draw each wall, write in the length, and map out the depth of closets and other built in areas.
- Draw in the major pieces of furniture - bed, dresser, desk, etc.
- Draw any floor pieces or rugs.
- Decide on what color to paint your walls. Think about which colors you'll always want in your room. Choose colors you'll really love for a long time, and that you won't mind seeing every day for a while.
- If you have a favorite place, like a certain beach, a place you go hiking, or some other outdoor setting, you might want to take a picture of it. Then you can look at the main colors, and use those to create your color scheme.
- Different paints make different impressions on your room. Light colored paints, especially pale blue, can make a room look much larger. Dark colored paints, such as deep blue or purple, can make a room look a lot smaller.
- Using paint chips from stores can be really tricky. It's really important to take them home and test them out in your own room. Things like lighting can change how a chip looks in the store to what it looks like in your room. As a rule, the color on the chip is quite a bit lighter than the color will actually look on your walls.
- Decide what you want your floor to look like. If you already have a hardwood or carpeted floor, your parents probably won't want to go through the process of re-doing the floor. There are many ways to make your floor look nice without spending a fortune, though.
- If you have a hardwood floor, you can add removable carpeting in the form of a rug.
- Clear out all your things. Separate them into three different categories; things to keep, things to give to charity or sell, and things to throw away.
- Put the things that you are keeping into boxes or bags until you are ready to put them back into your bedroom. Put the things you are going to give away/sell into boxes and either take them to a charity shop, give them to a friend or relative who wants them or if you have enough stuff, have a garage sale.
- Put the things you are going to throw away into bags and get rid of them, recycling whenever possible. Don't forget, old toys and furniture can be modified or repainted, so look at each piece carefully. Start decorating when you have cleared everything out. Get a parent or adult to help you with things such as painting the ceiling if you can't get to it, or jobs that you can't do.
- Plan it out, then put back all your furniture, and bring in the possessions that you decided to keep from your clear out. Put them all back into your room.
- Shop for items to finish off your room, or to add personal touches to it. These could be unique things that you like, or items that blend in with any color schemes you have done.
Tips
- Be organized and make sure you have enough storage so that you don't lose things.
- If you are getting wallpaper try to measure your walls to see exactly how many rolls you will need.
- Measure your bedroom floor before you go out to buy carpeting or wooden floor.
Warnings
- Make sure you get help from adults when necessary as decorating can be tricky at times or even dangerous (watch out for those electrical outlets!).
- After picking a color try painting a little part of your wall first to make sure you like it.
- Don't do anything permanent that you're not sure about!
