Dark and Moody Bedroom Makeover

My teenage son’s only requests for his bedroom were black walls with black motorized roller shades.

When we moved into this house, my teenage son got one of the nicer bedrooms but there was one catch. Because his room has an en suite bathroom, he would need to give up his room the few times a year we have guests. Note: “guests” is almost exclusively my parents and there are a handful of other beds for him to choose from. Second note: the internet was inexplicably BIG MAD about this set up claiming everything from we are damaging his psyche to the suggestion that WE should give up our room for guests so as not to displace my poor neglected teenager.

Just like most of my room makeovers, this one was as low budget as possible so paint was going to be my hero. My son wanted “black” walls but I convinced him that a dark gray would feel a little more sophisticated and inviting. He chose a color called Carbon Copy so I started painting. At first I wasn’t sure about color drenching, but then I decided just to go for it and painted the whole shebang.

My son also wanted nightstands so I grabbed a pair on Facebook marketplace for $25. They were a little low so I built a simple base for both of them, swapped out the hardware and added metallic contact paper to the linoleum tops to elevate them ever so slightly. They are currently used to store old invisalign trays and stolen food wrappers from what I can tell.

Lots of the furniture has been reused from his old room- the metal dresser was a flea market purchase from years ago, the artwork came from my grandmother, Homegoods and an early gift I had made for Mark of his first car’s old hubcap.

I’ll link to the items that we *did* buy just for the space- all with my son’s approval: new lamps, a new rug and… of course… the motorized roller shades. The only thing I screwed up was the direction in which I ordered his roller shades. I typically prefer roller shades to roll ‘over’ so you don’t see the roll of fabric, but for black out shades, you want them as close to the window as possible to avoid the gap of light on either side. I should have ordered these roller shades with the roll ‘under’ to avoid this; lesson learned.

Product Links

• Bed
• Rug
• Lights

The hope is that this room will grow with my son and he will like this space throughout highschool and even when he comes home from college. I have promised him a closet makever at some point and when that happens, that beloved old dresser may go somewhere else. For now, just like most of my room makeovers, it’s the first big step of a room that will always be a bit “in progress.”