Work in Progress - The perfect gaming bedroom

Our clients came to us because they wanted to create a room which was better suited to their son’s age as he was about to start secondary school. They really wanted to maximise storage, make a space for sleepovers, and add a desk for study, but the priority in the brief was to create a place for their son to game to his heart’s content. He was currently using an old TV and a small sofa for gaming, but as every dedicated gamer knows, a large wall mounted TV with a comfortable chair is the goal - perfect for almost lying horizontal to play. This is what the room looked like when we first saw it:

Pretty much what every preteen’s room looks like - overflowing with ‘things’, and furniture which has been outgrown. Storage was desperately needed, along with bookshelves and a much cooler colour scheme. Our clients had been looking around for ideas and seen some high sleeper beds in red and black, and their son loved these colours. He even had a coat with a great black to red ombré effect, which I loved and wanted to incorporate into the design somehow.

A high sleeper bed made sense, to make the best use of the available space and also to provide a sleepover space underneath. When we asked our young client what colours he liked, he said red, black and grey with orange. As mum wasn’t too keen on the orange idea, we agreed to keep this in small amounts. We also had to incorporate a mini fridge into the design as gaming can be thirsty work, and a new carpet needed to be very hardwearing as the family have a dog, and the presence of the fridge meant spilled drinks were likely. We decided the bed should stay in its original position as it was the best place in the room for it, but everything else could move if needed. The clients also wanted stairs up to the bed rather than a ladder, as they felt it would be safer and more comfortable to use. We would also add plug sockets for the gaming equipment and the mini fridge, a display space for a collection of figurines, and would change the lighting. So the scene was set - the basics had been agreed and all I needed to do now was design the best gaming room ever - no pressure at all!

Here are a couple of inspiration pictures from our young client:

You can see that he really did like red and black, and that he wanted a cocooning room to play in. We agreed with mum not to go too dark, but I wanted to use colour to add that sense of drama from the inspiration photos. Our client also loved stripes, which inspired me to look at wallpapers with diagonal stripes. I settled on the one below, as it has a light background so would keep the overall feel light, but would definitely add drama.

I created the cocooning feel with a dark green ceiling paint colour, and also with the base colours of red and black for the bespoke furniture. I used two different reds - one which was deeper and richer for the main bed colour, another which was brighter and more punchy to pick out the details, and an off black to soften the space. I used a deep orange sparingly - on the skirting boards and as an accent on the desk. The ombre effect I’d loved on the coat became the shades of red on the drawers in the desk, progressing from dark to light.

The real star of the show was to be the bed, and I spent time making sure there was storage within easy reach around the sleeping area, as there could be no bedside table with a high sleeper design like this. I echoed the stripes of the wallpaper and worked them into the design for the headboard, and added rechargeable lights above so that our client could turn them off after getting into bed. When designing the steps, I made some of them hollow, so that our young client could use them for storage or for putting a glass down when using the gaming area underneath. I sourced a chair which was large and comfortable for gaming, but it also folded out to become a single bed for those important sleepovers. I made a space for the mini fridge under the stairs, and designed bespoke shelving for the gaming equipment, covering everything this set up would need. Here’s the finished design for the bed, shown as a 3D ‘render’ of the model I’d created of the room:

I then moved on to the wardrobe and bookshelf design, again using the diagonal stripes as a motif. They became the handles for the wardrobe in this case, which would be much cooler than the traditional metal handle or knob. I made sure there was plenty of storage for clothes inside, with two hanging rails and shelves with drawers below.

I also added colour changing LED lights under the bed and around the monitor riser on the desk, and made sure that these could be switched on by themselves, and not with the other lighting, as they would create a very cool glow in the dark.

When we presented the finished design to our client, he was so excited he couldn’t sleep! We made a couple of changes to the gaming equipment shelves and swapped the bespoke wardrobe and desk to ready made ones for budgetary reasons, but other than that we had a big thumbs up and got on with the build. We created accurate technical drawings so that our carpenter could recreate the bed design exactly as I had intended, and the lighting and electrical work was tackled first. Then the decorating started whilst our carpenter was building the bed.

The bed was constructed in our carpenter’s workshop and then taken apart to be spray painted in the colours I’d chosen. It was a complicated build as there were so many parts to the bed, and of course everything had to fit and function perfectly.

Our young client loves to read so I incorporated book storage at the end of the bed 

Once the bed had been sprayed, it was reconstructed at our client’s house, taking a week to put together. The LEDs were connected to the power supply, the other pieces of furniture were added, and the room was nearly complete. Our client wanted to change the fabric for the blind, so we chose a graphic black and white pattern and the blind was the last piece to be added to the room.

Our clients are thrilled with the room and said this:

Our son says it is spectacular. One problem - he’s invited all his friends for a sleepover to see the new room so he's currently working out a rota! So a lovely problem to have and hopefully tells you all you need to know about how happy he is.