This Teen Girl's Room Has Total Grown-up Appeal
Word spreads fast among teenage girls. And that’s just fine with Sari Sunshine. The Roslyn, New York interior designer created a crisp, modern white room for her teenage daughter, whose friends saw it and begged their parents to hire Sunshine. Then those friends’ friends saw those bedrooms and asked their parents to hire Sunshine to do their bedrooms, and so on and so on — to, like, infinity!
Anyway, Sunshine’s latest is a true-blue modern bedroom for her cousin’s teen daughter. Working with limited direction — “blue” was basically all Sunshine was able to pry out of the high schooler — she transformed the room from something akin to a guest room in your grandma’s house to a blue, white and reflective room from which the teenager rarely emerges.
The update certainly elicits envy from the teen’s friends, but the original Roy Lichtenstein on the wall will have art aficionados asking for a visit, too.
This former guest room in the Roslyn, New York, house had been basically unchanged for decades. It was dark and had become a dumping ground for pieces of furniture that didn’t work in the rest of the home. “It was kind of sad,” Sunshine says.
AFTER: Using a blue, white and silver color scheme, Sunshine created something that truly belongs to the teen. Corrugated cardboard flats painted blue help add texture and character. “The room just didn’t have personality,” Sunshine says. “It needed some kind of texture to give it that. This is an outgoing, young, bubbly girl. The room felt flat, and the texture shows her personality more.”
Wall flats: Blueprint, Inhabit
Sunshine played with lots of white and reflective surfaces to brighten the dark room. The white leather bed is stain resistant and easy to clean. The pillows are from Jonathan Adler’s Happy Chic line. Since the company doesn’t make a throw blanket, Sunshine used a cloth shower curtain from the line as a blanket.
Frilly window treatments and a large headboard blocked a lot of the light.
AFTER: So Sunshine moved the bed to the accent wall, and added mesh curtains and reflective surfaces to open this corner and bounce natural light around.
The designer says she’s noticed that many teenage girls like to spend a lot of time sitting on their floors, working on homework or on the computer, so she added a thick shag wall-to-wall carpet. Still, all the teenage girls she’s designed rooms for request a desk. “It’s a visual thing,” she says.
Carpet: Designers North Carpet
Sunshine says she completely plans spaces in her head within 24 hours of seeing them. “I just see it,” she says. “It lays itself out for me.”
Another thing she likes to do with all her projects is bring life to her designs. Literally. She prefers a single fish rather than plants, which, she says, wind up looking droopy and sad from lack of attention. “A fish is a perfect companion to the whole room,” she says.
Here, the teen’s fish, Rufus, swims in a bowl with bright blue glass pieces. Two heart-shaped paper weights from Baccarat sit next to it, adding just a spoonful of color outside of the room’s palette.
Curtains: Ikea; desk: Z Gallerie; lamp: Zuo Modern
The designer deconstructed four chandelier light fixtures and affixed them to the ceiling over the recessed lights already there.
The dated vertical-stripe wallpaper felt too busy with anything hanging on it.
AFTER: Now the only deviation from the color scheme comes from a vibrant original art pice by Roy Lichtenstein, which belonged to the girl’s grandparents and hangs over a fold-out futon. Sunshine went to the grandparents’ house one day and was allowed to pick out one piece of art from their collection to jazz up their granddaughter’s bedroom. She felt this piece was just what the room needed.
“It’s a little much for a teenage girl, but since she and her friends don’t really sit on the furniture but on the floor, they don’t get too close to it, so it’s pretty safe,” Sunshine says.
She spent $5,500 wholesale on the furniture, carpet and bedding and $3,000 in construction costs, which included gutting the space, redoing the closets and hanging a flat-screen TV.
“She loves it,” Sunshine says. “She doesn’t leave the room now. If she had a bathroom and kitchen in there, no one would see her again. And the amazing thing is, she keeps it clean.”
More: Palatable Palettes: 8 Cool Blue Bedrooms
