How to Prep and Paint a Teen Bedroom

Drum roll…. Gabrielle and Sébastien picked color A. It’s a very pale pink. I find it very pretty, delicate, and perfect to paint a teen bedroom.

I’ll admit that at first I preferred color “C” because it’s a little darker, I was worried that the color “A” would look white in her bedroom because it’s very light. However as I mentioned in my post bedroom colors for a teen bedroom, I think it’s best to go with a color of Gabrielle’s choosing.

This post also contains some affiliate links for your convenience. Click here to read my full disclosure policy.

How to prep a teen bedroom

First we filled in all the nail holes and dings on the walls with drywall joint compound.

There were also three spots on the ceiling to fix where we had hung decorative lanterns on her ceiling years ago.

We used the same procedure as we did here prepping walls for painting.

We used a vacuum and swiffer duster to remove any dust that could be stuck to the wall.

Before we started painting we had to clean the bedroom walls.

We haven’t washed her bedroom walls in years, skipping the crucial step of washing the walls could have lead to a disaster. Dealing with paint peeling off the walls because you did not take the time to clean the walls is no fun at all. And you’ll quickly realize that all the “time you saved” from skipping that step was not worth it at all and will cost you hours of hard work.

We also removed all the base boards because we will be replacing them with new ones.

Why are we replacing the baseboards? Oh because when we installed the “floating floor” we had the great idea to install the flooring without removing the baseboards to “save time” and we would add quarter round moulding to hide the gaps.

Well, that “time saver” only caused us a bunch of issues to this day. We so wish we would have removed them prior to installing the flooring.

Now we have gaps between the edges of the flooring and the baseboards and the door frames.

Our solution for Gabrielle’s bedroom is to install thicker baseboards and wider quarter rounds to cover the gaps. And the same goes for the door frames, thicker mouldings to cover the gaps.

How to paint a ceiling

Time to start painting! We started by painting the ceiling. (We detached the ceiling light prior to painting to make it easier to paint.

When painting a ceiling, we like to use a paint edger to contour the ceiling. I know many like to use a paint brush and painter’s tape (which is great too), but we find using a paint edger faster for us.

We work with the paint edger on small areas at a time, this way the paint on the edge doesn’t have time to dry before we use the paint roller. Which means we go from paint edger, to paint roller, and repeat until the entire ceiling area is painted.

To paint a ceiling start by using a paint edger to paint the contour of the surface.

Use paint roller with long handle to paint the ceiling.

When the ceiling was completely dry we proceeded with painting the walls.

How to paint a teen bedroom

It was bittersweet seeing the beautiful pale pink cover the bright orange walls. I was loving the new color but sad seeing her nursery colors be covered up. Is it a little weird to feel like that?

To paint the walls, we proceeded like we did the ceiling: paint edger, to paint roller, and repeat.