Budget Ideas for Decorating a Teen's Room
by Rachel Paxton

Description: Creative ideas for decorating a teen's room on a budget.

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Is it time to update your teen's bedroom decor? First sit down with your teen and come up with some color ideas. Once you have picked some colors, you're ready to look for some new furniture, or you can update furniture you already own. It is very easy to update old furniture with a little elbow grease. You can find very inexpensive dressers and nightstands at yard sales and freshen them up with a little paint to match the decor of your teen's room. We have a dresser that has been painted several times as our children have grown up. Also look for furniture that can serve more than one purpose. I found a couple of great old wooden toy boxes at a yard sale that would make great storage, as well as a window seat if you were to add a cushion to the top of it.

As a school project, our daughter repainted an old cabinet that has been passed down through our family. She sanded it, painted it white, and then decoupaged onto the cabinet black and white photos she had cut out from magazines. We changed the knobs to match.

Be creative with your nightstands. We found some old apple crates at a yard sale that made a great nightstand. You could also drape some fabric over a plastic crate to make an attractive nightstand.

You can repaint other items to decorate a teen's room. We decided to hang some simple shelves on the walls for more storage space. We spray painted the brackets that the shelves hang on to match our daughter's decor. Our daughter also had an old bulletin board that we decided to paint. We taped around the inside of the board and then spray painted the frame of the board black. We used a paintbrush to paint the cork white.

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If your teen is looking for a fun craft project, have them try decorating their own lampshade. You can use an existing lamp or one you find at a yard sale or thrift shop. Fabric can be glued to a lampshade with spray adhesive that you can find at any craft store. The whole lampshade can be covered with fabric, or you can cut out shapes and glue them to the lampshade. You can also use decoupage to glue cut outs to a lampshade. Cut outs can be fabric or paper. Cutouts can be from wrapping paper, greeting cards, old calendars, anything you can think of! Trim the lampshade with decorative trim. Just hot glue in place.

If you're handy with a sewing machine, make a couple of throw pillows to quickly update the decor of your teen's room. You don't even have to necessarily go out and buy new fabric. Look for clothing that is no longer worn, old sheets, tablecloths, etc. You can re-purpose any kind of fabric. You can also make new curtains from re-purposed fabric. Bed sheets can make great curtains. If you have old t-shirts that your teen can't bear to get rid of, you can use them to make keepsake pillows or quilts to give the room a more personal touch.

If you need extra storage, or have more clothes than you know what to do with, invest in some vacuum sealed storage bags. These storage bags are great and you can get them at Walmart. You can store a lot of clothes in the large bags. After you fill the bag you use a vacuum cleaner to remove all the air from the bag, and they compress to a fraction of the original size. This is a great way to store seasonal clothes. Just slip the bags under the bed until your teen needs them.

With a little creativity, you can decorate a teen's room on a budget and still achieve the look your teen is looking for.

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