The teenage bedroom: stop seeing it as part of your house

Across the country, they’ll soon be leaving. Swapping your house for flats, digs, or if they’re going to college in Dublin, small corners of shared rooms that would make your heart stop at the cost. But what about your teenager’s bedroom at home? Is it time to put on the industrial strength rubber gloves and take a black sack to the space?

And what if you’re just coming into it from the other end, and your adorable princess, or the miniature manly apple of your eye, have suddenly shot up and instead of seeing being sent to their rooms as punishment, are actively stomping off there and refusing to come out? In short what is to be done about teenage bedrooms?

The first rule is to stop seeing it as part of the house. Your friends are unlikely to need to see inside, so you can ditch the expectation that this is another canvas on which to express your decorative personality. Being a teenager is about separating from the family, and their bedroom, alongside those more exciting places in school, such as behind the bicycle sheds, is where they’re going to do it.

What you can do for them is give them a blank canvas and one or two boundaries. If your formerly sensitive son wants to paint his room black, compromise on blackboard paint on one wall (€19 at smartersurfaces.ie) and a box of chalks.

If your once biddable daughter has gone off her pony print wallpaper and wants instead to plaster the place with posters of alarming looking men, avoid the horrors of Blu-Tack (it either works too well, or not at all), and cover a wall in magnetic paint (€59 from smartersurfaces.ie). You add a layer, then paint over in any colour you like – so she can change her heartthrobs, and her mind, with ease.

What teenagers need is a place to sleep, to hang out, to study and to sulk. That boils down to a bed and desk, decent lighting, good storage, plus a sofa or big floor cushions. They also need as many surfaces as possible to cover with clutter. Then they need you to leave them to get on with it. And if they’ve gone to college? Forget about clearing up and out – they’ll be back. Again and again.