How to Paint a Teen Girl's Room

Enjoy creating a new teen room.

Teenage girls vary greatly in personality, personal style and color preferences. These characteristics shape the overall theme and paint colors for their bedroom. A quiet or shy teen may want something simple and easy. However, an outgoing adolescent may choose more dramatic colors for her room. Allow your teen to pick the colors and help with painting the room. Help her choose one main color or several colors to create the ultimate teen-friendly room.

Things You'll Need

• Sponge
• Bucket
• Scuff remover
• Towel
• Screwdriver
• Old sheet
• Spackle paste
• Metal spackle tool
• Primer
• Paintbrushes

Instructions

Planning

1. Take your teenager to a local home improvement store in your area. Pick out paint swatches, and take these home. Look at the different colors, and encourage your teen to think about what she wants. Place swatch colors up against furniture to see what color scheme might go well with the existing decor in the room.

2. Encourage your teen to choose colors that might affect her mood. According to "Health" magazine, colors can affect moods. Blue is calm and relaxing, while yellow and green are happy colors. A sport-loving teenage girl might want to choose colors of her favorite team for her room, such as yellow and purple or green and red.

3. Ask your teen to choose one main color or several colors for her room. Encourage her to look at home and garden magazines to give her ideas. This is especially helpful if she plans on changing the decor in her room as well.

Preparation and Painting

1. Fill up a bucket with hot soapy water. Dip a sponge in the soapy water to clean the walls before painting. Remove scuff marks with a scuff remover. Dry the walls off with a towel.

2. Use a screwdriver to unscrew all the light switches, plugs and cable covers in the room. Set the cover plates aside in another room so paint doesn't accidentally drip on them.

3. Place all furniture in the middle of the room, and put an old sheet over everything. However, remove furniture from the room if you need more room to walk around.

4. Use a metal spackle tool to place spackle paste over holes in the walls. Remove excess spackle so you don't create any bumps or raised edges. The spackle should simply cover up the holes. Allow the spackle to dry for one hour unless the packaging directions specify more time.

5. Dip your paintbrush in primer to coat non-white walls. Primer lets the new paint color show up better. Allow the primer to dry before proceeding to the next step.

6. Paint the room one solid color. Allow the paint to dry for at least one day before using any other colors so the main background color can dry first. You might be done at this point if your teen only wants one color in her room.

7. Use a different color to paint flowers, hearts or other embellishments that your teen selects. You can paint these in random places or along the top border of the room. You can also use different colors to paint stripes or polka dots in the room. Allow all the paint to dry again for two days before placing furniture in the room.

References

• "'Health' magazine"; Boost Your Color With Mood; Milena Damjanov; April 2008
• "'House Beautiful' magazine"; Paint Colors
• "This Old House"; Choose Paint Colors With a Color Wheel; Natalie Rodriguez
• "Home Designing"; Teen Room Design; March 2009
• "Organizing and Decorating Kids Rooms"; Creative Teen Girl Decorating Ideas; Sherrie Le Masurier