If you’re searching for some boys bedroom inspo, here’s a green and orange subtle gamer themed one for you. Perfect if you’re after some box bedroom inspiration for your own little boy!
Just to be clear, we’re talking a proper UK small bedroom. Not those ‘small’ American bedrooms that seem to flood your search results. Perhaps my google is broken but I don’t class a double bed with a chaise longue at it’s foot, and enough space to do a cart-wheel as a small bedroom. We can’t even do that in our master bedroom!
This little room is roughly 2m x 2.5m and is only slightly bigger than a typical UK box room. So after working out the best layout for his small bedroom, it was time to start the fun makeover process and turn this white box into something fabulous!
My soon-to-be 9 year old gave me a design brief of a green, blue and orange ‘gamer’ bedroom, and I couldn’t wait to start the transformation and have some fun with it.

In this article...
The small bedroom before it’s makeover
Other than hanging a few pictures on the walls, we didn’t really do much to any of the bedrooms for the first year of moving in. Mainly because we had to budget and prioritise other DIY work first, like adding the kitchen island, and building the false chimney breast in the lounge – which is probably my favourite DIY to date!
Prior to this bedroom makeover, this is what Jasper’s room looked like. All the walls were painted in cheap new-build bright white; the type that reveals plasterboard at the lightest touch. He had a few dinosaur pictures hung on the wall and a huge IKEA chest of drawers which our friends kindly gave us when we first moved in.
He was happy with with his bedroom, especially as it was the first time he had his very own space. There just wasn’t much space for anything else in here and It just looked a little plain.
Annoyingly, I can’t find a before photo of when the chest of drawers was in there. I can only find this one with the much smaller tall boy, so you’ll have to imagine the whole empty wall is a big chest of drawers!

Creating a colour pallet for a small bedroom
As I mentioned earlier, my design brief was a green, blue and orange bedroom. Leaving plenty of room for interpretation!
Now, we all know that darker colours have the power to enclose rooms, whilst lighter tones can help open up spaces. So I wanted to find slightly more muted tones of his chosen colours, and ultimately avoid the garish gamer look. I knew I could still create a fun themed bedroom, but one that would work better in a small space and stay slightly more cohesive in our home.
His bedroom is also south facing, which means the light casts a lovely golden glow all throughout the day. Making all my paint choices run warmer than they would show in a north-facing room.
As for hardware, I planned to use a mix of black and brass. Why?
- Because his black metal bed frame was fairly new and couldn’t really be changed. At least not for a while anyway.
- I love the warmth of brass or gold hardware, so I wanted to incorporate this into his sunny bedroom.
I also wanted to find a fun doodle style wallpaper to make a feature wall in his room, and I’m still on the hunt for a large neon or LED sign to hang above his monitor.

Wallpaper and paint colours used in this bedroom
Walls: Cool Sea Air – Valspar & Timeless – Dulux
Desk & chest of drawers: F&B De Nimes colour matched in Valspar wood paint
Matt paint sealer: Polyvine Decorators Varnish
Wallpaper: Muriva Doodle Wallpaper

Prepping the room and painting the walls
After prepping his room by Polly filling any holes and washing the walls down. It was then time to start the fun job of painting – I love painting!
I have a fairly steady hand when it comes to cutting in. But for the neatest end result, I stuck down a mixture of masking tape and frog tape (the latter works far better) Just to protect the skirting boards, windows frame, celling and door frames from any accidental wobbly lines.
After adding a few more tester pots to my ever-growing paint sample collection. I settled on Valspa’s Cool Sea Air for his walls, which is a lovely muted green-grey. Originally I painted 3 walls in Cool Sea Air. But I ended up painting over the desk wall in the soft warm off-white, as it just started to feel a bit much in a small bedroom. The one warm-white wall helped open it back up again.
Originally I painted the bottom half of the headboard wall in ‘Simply Grey’ for contrast, which was what we painted the sliding chevron barn door that we made. Although, there was something about it that I didn’t like, so I ended up going over that with a splash of Cool Sea Air too!

Installing the chest of drawers and desk
This was where James’ self-taught DIY skills came into play. He was set the task of building a custom floating desk and chest of drawers as one entire unit. This was so it would all be the same height at the end, and help create a nice flow in the room.
If you’re interested on how this was built. I will be writing a separate post with all the nitty-gritty details, as theres a lot to cover!
As I wanted the chest of drawers to appear weightless and create the illusion of more floor space. James built a base for it to sit on, which was ever so slightly narrower than what the unit was going to be. We did this as being able to see the floor run beneath furniture can help make a room feel bigger.
Once he had built the frame for the chest of drawers, along with all the drawers to go inside it. He then secured it to the base and the wall.
After building a wall support for the desk. We then secured the MDF top onto the chest of drawers to create one big desk worktop.

Painting the furniture in F&B De Nimes
I absolutely love this colour, and the way it can sometimes look blue or appear a touch more teal in certain lights. But Farrow & Ball paint isn’t cheap, so to save some pennies we did our usual move and got De Nimes colour matched in Valspar’s wood paint. The colour match was spot on and it’s such a gorgeous silky paint to work with.
First I primed the MDF using this wood primer, and let that dry before applying 2 coats of the Valspar colour matched paint.
To stop any scuffs or marks, I then did 3 coats of this matt sealer (you can also get this in gloss or satin)

Adding a narrow bookshelf
So that Jasper had some shelves to display a few of his Lego creations, puzzles and books. James built him a narrow bookshelf out of MDF, which was then fixed into the wall and down into the chest of drawers.
This had to be narrow to avoid covering over the light switch!

Wallpapering for the first time ever
Neither of us had ever done any wallpapering before, so this was a uh, *cough* fun challenge…
After mixing up some wallpaper paste in a bucket. We brushed it onto the back of the sheets one at a time, and onto a section of the wall. Starting at the top of the wall, we placed the first piece into position and then slowly brushed out any air bubbles working our way down.
It was then just a case of repeating this process all the way across the wall. Doing our best to line up the patten along the way. Let me tell you – you have to work fast when you’re working with wallpaper!
Although we didn’t overly enjoy the process, it ended up looking brilliant. This wallpaper has some metallic parts too, which are beautiful when the light catches it.
To complete this wall and tidy up the bottom of the cut paper. We added a small dado rail that we picked up in B&Q and painted it the same colour as the wall below.


Boys bedroom makeover – final result
After getting all his things back into his tiny bedroom, this is how it’s currently looking. I’m calling it a ‘subtle gamer’ bedroom, but it’s not fully finished yet. It still needs a few more accessories, and some photos and prints hung on the walls. The main thing that i’m yet to find though, is a big LED or neon gamer light to fix to the white wall behind his monitor.
If you know of any – please spill the tea in the comments as I think this will really add to his room makeover.
But for now, we have one very happy boy with his newly decorated bedroom.
What do you think?

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