A Boy Room Update: Jackson’s Preteen Room

I cannot believe I am at a phase of life where I am designing a preteen room! Yet, here we are. If you’ve been following along lately you will notice my kids both asked for furniture for Christmas. Not dolls or nerf guns or kid stuff. It feels a little like the earth has shifted, but it is also fun. Sevi asked for a desk which is what helped inspire a reno on her Secret Room and Jackson asked for a new bed. Not just any new bed, a floating bed.

Big Boy Room Before

When we moved into our #newoldhome as I like to call it, we knew creating special places for the kids was important to us. {While our home feels “old”, it’s really a new build, but that was my dream from the start. You can read more about that here.}

Sevi’s room is very girly and sweet {despite her appreciation of zombies and creepy things.} For Jackson, we found this really cool used bunk bed on Facebook Marketplace. I gave it a little makeover and it looked brand new. The feel of his room was a little more woodland-y hunter-ish {if that’s a vibe.} But, he is getting older and asked to change his room to something a little more age appropriate. I really hated to see that cute bunk house go but he was ready!

Preteen Room Dreaming

While it was tricky, I did my best to let him do a lot of the planning. {Do ya’ll remember when I let him help me decorate the Christmas Tree this past year with animals??}

Jackson asked specifically for a floating bed, which is super cool evidently. We decided to add LED lights to the bottom of it, which made it even cooler of course. We also added a new Beddys set to complete the look and he loves it. And then he asked for a Lava Lamp {What decade are we even in people?!} But we are all loving that thing!

While we are talking about super cool accessories, I have to show you the fingerprint lock we added to his “secret room.” The secret room is attic space off of his bedroom that we turned into usable space. We disguised it into the wall as best as we could. The lock was super easy to install and Jackson feels like a legit spy kid out of a movie now. What kid doesn’t dream of a secret room that can only be entered by fingerprint?!

Boy Room Final Touches

Boy stuff has come a long way hasn’t it? Do you remember when it was so much easier to only find cute girl stuff? Now I feel like the boy clothes and decor things are so much better and easier to find.

While I wanted to let Jack have as much free rein as possible, I couldn’t resist “helping out” some. Knowing we would be using LED lights and Lava Lamps, etc. I wanted to keep the rest of the room clean and simple so the room can essentially grow with Jackson for years to come.

Ensuring we had some “masculine” looking pieces will be key as he gets older in the event we want to change up curtains and bedding without having to redo the entire room. I thought this lamp and basic nightstand balanced the other elements well. If you can believe it, the curtains are from 2015! I used them in our old house and was pleasantly surprised they worked in here (I am all about a budget reno!) The curtain rods are from Target and very inexpensive. I added a cute boy throw pillow {is that a thing?} and a couple cozy blankets to complete the room.

Preteen Room All Lit Up

Whew! Look at those lights! Isn’t that custom LED name light cool? I couldn’t let Mark off the hook here. He was all too happy to help hang a deer head on the wall. Jackson likes to hunt and that deer was actually the first one he shot by himself so he is very proud of it. He didn’t know we were going to add it to his room and was so surprised when he came home from school and saw it hanging up there!

In the end I had so much fun working on this with Jackson. He was aware of many of the design elements, but showing him the final result of everything pulled together was the best. You can find my mood board and links here in case you are working on your own preteen boy room. Now, excuse me while I take the rest of the day to cry into a bowl of ice cream realizing my baby boy is growing up.