Following these steps you can help your teens get the rooms they want and learn some lessons at the same time.
A child’s bedroom is a very special place, it’s one spot in the home that is his and lets him express his own identity and sometimes even helps him find it. Letting your child have some say in the decorating scheme of his bedroom is very important and can go a long way toward making your child feel welcome and accepted at home.
Victoria Jarvis from www.makeoveryourspace.com teaches a class for teens that helps them explore how to best approach their interior decorating ideas and gives them some practical tips. This course is great for teens as their ideas can often exceed practical limitations and an organized breakdown of the steps involved can bring them back to reality.
The first step is to set up a needs list. What does your child like about her room and what does she want to change? This is the brainstorming part of the process where she can list what she has, what she needs, and what she wants.
Next is the budget. Back to reality, it's time to start pricing the items needed and wanted and see what actually falls into the budget. To get the most accurate list of prices you should take some measurements so you know what size the accessories need to be.
Then it's time to let the fantasy and the reality collide and a practical plan can be developed. Look at the price of the "needs" items and then determine how much is left for the "wants" items. It may be hard for your child to let go of some of her dream accessories but remind her that she will have a birthday and holiday gifts and she could earn the money to purchase these items later (A little lesson in personal finance, anyone?)
The next step is one that Victoria touts as the “fun part”. She helps the kids make a room plan where they measure their rooms and the accessories and staples and then play online with a space planner program that lets them virtually rearrange their room until they get exactly the look they want and one that actually fits their living space.
Finally all of the information is gathered and a storyboard is created that the kids can give to their parents or guardians to let them know exactly what the child expects, and to prove that the expectations are reasonable, and that the budget has been taken into consideration. If you’re working with your child then you don’t need to create this storyboard but you might want him to take it this extra step because it’s a good exercise in putting his ideas together.
As a side note, many schools no longer offer home economics courses; by letting your child create his own plan, design and budget for decorating his bedrooms you can take over those lessons and help your child become better prepared for college life or for his first apartment.
For more information please see Teen Bedroom Decorating Ideas or Teen Decorating.
