Decorating a boy's bedroom


Here are a few ideas and hints about how to revamp a 10 year old boy's bedroom to create a soccer-themed look. As our soccer fan is a supporter of the French club Olympique de Marseille (OM), that helps in terms of decorating, as the club's colors are pleasant shades of light blue, going towards turquoise and a contrasting white and sometimes a deeper shade of blue.
adolescent's OM soccer-themed bedroom revamp
decorating a young boy's bedroom
Before White walls and baseboards, the touch of color is achieved through a gorgeous wide decorative border. The furniture is in light-colored wood, some of it in unfinished wood.
The basic principle : make sure the number 1 fan is away for a few days before their tenth birthday so you can get down to redecorating! It's best to just get on with the most time-consuming parts and get the wide decorative border started, so that later you can work on the most creative bits together...
Take the bed down, place all of the furntiure into the center of the room, and the room makeover can start with the thankless task of removing the existing decorative border with the help of a wet sponge and a scraper, followed by a little light sandpapering.
The top and bottom edges of the new decorative border are marked out with masking tape for the painting stage. Stick strips of masking tape to the back of the door in order to reproduce the "cross and arrow" symbol that features on the club's soccer strip...
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Choosing the paint

Firstly, go for natural paints (with linseed oil binder) to avoid introducing any toxic substances into the child's bedroom. To obtain a very specific color, such as ''OM blue", a  very dark turquoise was mixed with a sky blue color.
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The decorative border is painted using a wide paintbrush, painting from the outer edge of the border towards the center so as to avoid splashes beyond the masking tape area. After the paint has dried, a second layer of paint is necessary.
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The cross is painted using a stencil brush (a round brush with a flat end which can be used with a stencil). Like with a stencil, you first have to dab the brush on a cloth, before applying paint, dabbing it on inside the area marked off by the masking tape.

'Little extras" that will be much-appreciated...

3 adidas stripes
Above the window, the 3 stripes of the club's sponsor are reproduced
soccer ball printed on photo quality printer paper
Above the bed, here's a computer-designed picture (with their first name on the ball) which is printed onto thick photo quality printer paper, then carefully cut out.

Now it's time to revamp furniture and shelving...

shelves revamped in OM's colors
This shelf unit in unfinished wood was made some time ago by our young craftsman and his dad. It too gets a makeover in two different colors, the edges of the shelves being painted in a deeper shade of blue.
revamped wood shelving
painting with a stencil
Once they have seen their partially revamped bedroom, we can start the next stage with our young artist the "artistic" stage, using a stencil. You'll love this design so much that next up to be decorated with the stencil will be the mirror, picture frames and even the shelf unit! The stencils consist of images (logos...) that are printed out then reproduced on photo quality printer paper (as this paper is fairly water-resistant as well as easy to cut, it's perfect for making stencils which will be used ten or more times).
Be careful when using the stencil to make 'hollowed-out' letters (for example, the "O" of "OM"), you have to keep the part that you hollowed-out and set it in position along with the stencil, right in the center of the  "O" each time you use the stencil... We've decided to use 2 'reverse effect' stencils for a different touch. As soon as the stencil has been carefully cut out, its back is covered in non-permanent spray adhesive. All you have to do now is position the stencil (at various points on the decorative border to begin with, then upon the items to be decorated) and dab the area inside the stencil with a paintbrush from which most of the excess paint has been cleaned off.
revamped shelf unit in unfinished woodchambre_om_niroir.jpg (6 872 bytes)chambre_om_cadre.jpg (5 100 bytes)
Here are a few more ideas... a net attached to the wall from which to hang photographs or cuttings (these items are held fast by wooden clothespins decorated with a football design), letters in wood to be glued to the wardrobe, which now becomes the "visitors' locker"... Where can you find materials and other decorating ideas?
Would you like to share your photographs of a revamped room or a newly-decorated kids' bedroom? Share your big project with us !