Children’s rooms are always great to decorate. Complete with bold shapes and colors and whimsical details, creating a space to capture the imagination of a child can be a satisfying design project. When decorating a girl’s bedroom, you can find a myriad of ideas in magazines and on the Internet, but when you start looking for design ideas for a boy’s bedroom they are few and far between. In that vein here are some design ideas to help design a room that will grow with a young boy and carry him into his teenage years.

There is More to Life than Blue

The day a baby is born you learn that pink is for girls and blue is for boys, and that is all fine and good, but you can stretch beyond a baby design and fill his room with fun, vibrant colors along with a little blue. For example, you can use a bright red as the dominant color in the room and use bright white, pale wood tones and a soft, barely blue as the backdrop. The pale, neutral shades let the red stand, front and center. By limiting the amount of pattern incorporated in the room to a simple striped bedspread, visual clutter is kept to a minimum.

To step away from blue without leaving it behind all together, you can incorporate blue as one of the bright colors in a boy’s room. Pair it with bold oranges and greens and showcase it against a cream and gray background. Add random checkerboard patterns on a single focal wall to match bedding colors and balance the room. Another wall is drenched in a single bold color such as orange, and the energy in the room is perfect for a young and active boy. Coupled with simple furniture and clear dresser tops and tabletops to balance the active color, this design can easily transition a young boy through his teen years. Switch out accents as he matures: A clown-theme bicycle wall art of his elementary school days can be exchanged with a large canvas art as he enters high school.

Patterns Make the Room

By keeping a simple color palette and pairing blue with its cousin, green you can use patterns to add life to a young boy’s room. While mixing stripes and plaid was once taboo, styles of the 1970s and 1980s changed all of that. By staying in a very tight color palette and using every pattern imaginable you create a delight to behold. An important goal when working with pattern is to keep the scale of your patterns consistent, or they will be out of balance and just look wrong. The rule of thumb is large stripes, need large plaid and large polka dots, while small stripes go with small plaids and small polka dots. The consistency of scale is what makes all of the various and sundry patterns coexist harmoniously. A white or neutral background lets a single red confetti rug grab center stage. A confetti area rug on the floor may be neatly balanced by a colorful gumball machine on the dresser and across the room by toy soldiers on a shelf. Quiet neutral wood tones and crisp white accents can be used to tie everything together, and plain white boxes lined on wall to wall shelves provide versatile and ample storage without detracting from the room’s design.

Manmade patterns mixed in a room are fine, but remember not to discount the design appeal of some more organic patterns. For example, wall maps make a great visual statement in bright colorsl; or geometric wall decals can add movement to a wall. By wrapping the walls in patterns and shapes you then want to keep furniture monochromatic with simple lines. Adding a focal wall by using bright colors with a faux finishing technique can add depth to the space. Drenching a wall in deep, rich tones as a backdrop for light colored furniture is a great way to use white as your accent color.

Storage Solutions for a Young Boy

Regardless of age boys have many interests and hobbies to occupy their every day lives. With this in mind, there can never too much storage in a young boy’s room. Use creative solutions to keep bedroom clutter to a minimum to make your boy’s bedroom a room he will be happy to use. Keeping his room clean will not be a problem if he has storage that is accessible and easy to use. Using boxes, totes and bins that can hold all of your child’s paraphernalia is a cheap way to offer versatility and functionality in his storage solutions. Containers can be stored on shelves, under beds and in closets depending on where space most readily available. By painting or covering all containers displayed on open shelving, you give the appearance of an organized and uncluttered space. Tags on handles or labels on storage containers make Lego sets, erector sets and action figures easy to find.

By setting a neutral backdrop in your boy’s room, you can update the room’s theme as he grows in and out of favorite toys and movie characters. Removable wall decals, designed area rugs, lamps and accessories are easy and cheap to switch out to completely redo the room’s look for his next phase.

All text copyright Shanel. Photo from Flickr - "new work area" courtesy of CosmoPolitician.