When Spoonflower designer Melissa Hyatt realized her daughter’s bedroom was in store for a much needed makeover, the mother-daughter duo took matters into her own hands. Using designs from her collection Aqua Palms, Melissa and Hanna completely transformed the space with one-of-a-kind bedding to make the bedroom of Hanna’s dreams. Just wait until you see the before pictures! 

In 2011 my friend and fellow artist Michelle and I painted an under-the-sea mural for my daughter Hanna’s bedroom. The room was covered in ocean waves, featuring fish and seahorses in deep aqua shades. When Hanna turned sixteen, we decided it was time for a room update! Last fall, we started talking about a bedroom redo to better reflect her more grownup style.

Before

Before & After: Teen Bedroom Makeover | Spoonflower Blog
Hanna’s bedroom before the makeover!

After

Before & After: Teen Bedroom Makeover | Spoonflower Blog
The bedroom of Hanna’s dreams.

Hanna’s first step for the redesign started in my studio. She went through my pattern designs and selected a few complementary patterns from my Spoonflower collection.  

Before & After: Teen Bedroom Makeover | Spoonflower Blog

Duvet Cover: Hanna selected my Aqua Palm pattern for her duvet cover.

Euro Shams: Hanna really liked the European-inspired Porto for her euro shams. They provide an anchor for the rest of the bedding. 

Standard Shams:  For the standard shams, she went with Aqua Windows. It’s a small geometric design and the perfect complement for the sheets and soft minky throw blanket. 

Additional Design Elements

We used the printed fabrics to pick out a paint color – always a good idea when you’re looking at hundreds of paint chips! It’s good to have a starting point. We settled on Bashful Blue by Benjamin Moore.

Hanna was armed with a budget of $100 to accessorize the room. She chose the light-up memo board, new indigo bins for organization, the wall grids to display her polaroids, and her globe (she’s a science nerd!)

I used the 100% Italian cotton sateen for the bedding because of the soft, silky texture. It’s easy to wash so it’s great for bedding. I like to keep the cloth choices the same when there’s a white background so you can be sure the whites are the same. We decided to mix in a throw blanket in Aqua Windows for a textural change.

We added in my Indigo Whale design printed on Lightweight Cotton Twill with Spoonflower as a fun conversational design element.

Before & After: Teen Bedroom Makeover | Spoonflower Blog
Before & After: Teen Bedroom Makeover | Spoonflower Blog

How to Design a Unified Room with Spoonflower Collections

Choosing designs from a collection is great when designing a room, especially a bedroom. You don’t want every fabric to match, but you also don’t want conflicting patterns or colors. On a bed, it can be tricky to select fabrics and patterns that complement but don’t conflict with each other in terms of color, scale, and pattern—that’s why we went with my Spoonflower collection, Aqua Palms. Did you know you can adjust your search bar so you’re looking just for collections based on a certain theme?

Like we did with Hanna’s room, I suggest starting with the fabrics when designing a space. It’s a lot easier to match your paint color to the fabric than vice versa.

I also like to mix and match pattern scale. Aqua Palms is a larger scale with more white space, while Porto is a medium scale with a tighter repeat. Aqua Windows is a small pattern with an identifiable repeat. When choosing fabrics from a collection, that’s a good rule of thumb: pick one small pattern, one medium pattern, and one larger pattern scale. 

Create a mood board. If you picked your fabrics first, add some fabric swatches and your paint color options to it. You can order fabric swatches right from my Spoonflower shop! This will help you tie the rest of the elements – nightstands, furniture, artwork, accessories – together. 

Before & After: Teen Bedroom Makeover | Spoonflower Blog
Melissa and Hanna created a mood board to help make their dream bedroom a reality!
Before & After: Teen Bedroom Makeover | Spoonflower Blog

Tips for Designing a Cohesive Fabric Collection for Bedding

When designing a collection, I always keep scale and pattern top of mind. I like to create an eclectic mix of patterns – not obviously created from one another, but unified in the color palette and feeling. 

Before & After: Teen Bedroom Makeover | Spoonflower Blog

Melissa’s collection incorporates designs in multiple scales, one of her go-to rules for designing collections.

When I create a fabric collection, it’s influenced by the inspiration boards in my studio. I gather color reference and visual references which range from shells or sea glass from my walks, magazine pages, sketches and photographs. 

I love to paint palms and tropical leaves and for this collection, I thought to paint them in soft-washed aqua and blues echoing the colors of sea glass. Once the palms were painted, I played with small patterns to mix in my sketchbook. Working with watercolors allows me to create layers with color and paint. I can then use the same washes in the coordinating patterns. Porto was a tile pattern created from my European travels. It wasn’t intended to be the third pattern in this group, but as I played with my patterns and layered in designs, this one was a nice contrast to the soft feeling of the Aqua Palm design.

When designing a collection, I start with the statement prints, the star of the show. I’ll sketch, mix paints on my palette, and start to play. This sets the theme from which to build the grouping. I like to mix in a small geometric pattern to compliment the main design and then a print that will provide contrast to the main design. In my Aqua Palms Collection my Porto design is more saturated in color than the main print, Aqua Palms, so it creates a great complement when they mix together. I like to vary the scales of the design in a collection to elevate your ability to mix and match the patterns.

The Final Touches on Hanna’s Bedroom

This Aqua Palms collection creates a soothing oasis for Hanna’s new bedroom. The accessories, rug, and my giclee prints all echo the colors in her fabric choices. Now, she has a cozy place to snuggle, study, or hang out with her friends.

Before & After: Teen Bedroom Makeover | Spoonflower Blog
Before & After: Teen Bedroom Makeover | Spoonflower Blog

Photography by Elizabeth Glasgow


Photo by Stacy Wickham Photography

Melissa Hyatt is a watercolor artist and textile designer based out of eastern Long Island. With a degree in surface design from Syracuse University, Melissa has over twenty years of experience creating textile and pattern designs for companies like Waverly, Schumacher, Pier One and more. Her art studio is surrounded by the rolling farmlands and quiet beaches that dot Long Island’s North Fork, and she’s forever inspired by what she sees when she looks out her window or takes her golden retriever for a walk down to the shoreline. 

You can find out more about Melissa on her website www.melissahyatt.com or on Instagram @melissajanehyatt.