How To Make Over a College-Age Millennial's Bedroom

It's true that young adults are staying home longer but if you ask this mama, I LOVE it!

But it's also the time to spruce up their personal space to take it from teens to grown-ish.

I recently had the opportunity to work with Annie Selke and decided to makeover my daughter's bedroom. She's a twenty-something-year-old, full-time college student studying for her Masters in biology and works two jobs (tutoring middle-school kids in biology and the other is mentoring young children who are having a hard time making friends - I can totally relate to that one!). I mean this girl deserves so much more for all she's doing and how she's going to be one amazing teacher one day but today we are going to do a bedroom makeover to help her find her calm when she's home after a long and busy day.

I wish I had a before photo to show you all but I don't. But it goes something like this...mattress and bed laying directly on the floor, temporary paper shades (even though it's been 3.5 years since we moved in), a lightbulb in the ceiling so we can meet code to gain occupancy, hand me down bedding and a bunch of odds and ends, tables and decor.

Working with a budget of $2800 from Annie Selke, we decided a rug and bedding were at the top of the priority list, and since her room is so neutral we wanted to go with something fresh and calming but with a pop of color so we chose this rug:

This is their Kota Indigo Woven Wool Rug in and 8x10 and as you can see it really helped to anchor the room and set the tone. Since this rug took up a lot of the budget ($1238) we had to be very conscious of the next selections to get the most out of our allotted budget.

Next, we selected bedding because let's just be real, her old bedding was disgusting. Since she has a king-sized bed (our hand me down mattress that we couldn't return but it's more broken in now that it's been used and it's actually super comfortable but she won't give it back). LOL!

We chose the Wainscott Natural Reversible Matelasse coverlet and shams.

Her bed is by West Elm and can be found here.

We also knew we wanted to upgrade those temporary paper shades. Ha! So we chose these gorgeous Stone Washed Linen curtains in white (we used two).

I really love how much they make her 8' ceiling look taller. The curtain rod is by Target.

Her vanity area needed a little dressing up too, she already had this mirror also from Target but we installed these portable Gina wall lamps from Mitzi and I love how they really glam up this corner.

Here's a more pulled back view of her room:

Here you can see her ceiling light fixture which is the Ashleigh and also by Mitzi in their aged brass finish.

I'm a strong believer in elevating your light fixtures, consider their aesthetic more intentionally, they really do help bring in a lot of design impact to a space.

Speaking of light fixtures, I had seen this gorgeous fixture while at Emily Henderson's mountain house and it was in one of the guest rooms which I totally knew would be perfect in my daughter's room. It's fresh and modern and the architectural lines are stunning!

This is the Potence style Otis light by One Forty Three, we chose the 60" option. See what I mean? It creates such a quiet visual centerpiece but it's so beautifully crafted. It's really all in the details friends!

That little side table is by West Elm.

All found decor pieces can be found in the shop here.

Speaking of found items, I found this gorgeous plinth table on Facebook Marketplace.

This was the perfect sized table to create sort of an entryway where she can drop her keys and bags.

We also played around with this mirror by Annie Selke, it's the Enyo mirror and wow, it weighs a ton so we just sort of propped it up but will have to install it later.

Before:

With the Enyo mirror swapped in:

Two totally different looks but an easy enough change.

Ok, so how did we spend our $2,800 budget?

Kota Indigo Rug ($1238)

Wainscott Coverlet ($360)

Wainscott Reversible Shams ($94 each - we used two)

Stone Washed Linen Curtains 96" ($316 each - we used two)

Enyo Mirror ($730)

We were slightly over budget by $348 and here's why:

When we ordered the shams and curtain panels, we didn't realize it was for one. Once they arrived and we realized what happened we quickly had to order another sham and another curtain panel pushing us over budget but Annie Selke was so kind to acknowledge this mistake and included them into our allotment. When we crunched numbers we were actually sitting with enough left over that I picked up this little candle too.

In the end, this future educator of the world is very happy with her new room and loves coming home to it every night!

A HUGE thank you to Annie Selke and their amazing team!

Photography by Sage E Imagery.

All my best,

Lea