See How a TikToker Re-created Her ’90s Childhood Bedroom in Her Grown-Up Home
Close your eyes and picture your childhood bedroom. You’re likely remembering all your favorite colors on display. Maybe a canopy, a beaded curtain, a beanbag chair, or all your stuffed animals all lined up on your bed. Now, imagine creating that exact same space … in your current home. That’s right — as an adult, in the name of nostalgia, choosing to create a replica of your childhood bedroom.
That’s exactly what illustrator Kate Gabrielle did in her home. With nearly 110,000 followers on TikTok and 114,000 on Instagram, her followers aren’t strangers to her brand of colorful, kitschy, and cute, cute, cute.
So, in January, when Kate posted a TikTok video revealing that she had re-created her 1997 childhood bedroom in her guest room, aka her “time travel room,” down to the bedding, books, and posters on the wall, her followers were delighted.
From the comments, it’s easy to tell that Kate has now inspired others to possibly re-create their childhood bedrooms. User @old__bae commented, “I’ve been telling my fiancé for years that I want my future craft room to look like a combo of my childhood bedroom and a Limited Too.” User @sunshinejournals noted, “this is my dream, except I want to make the bedroom I wish I had as a kid haha.”
Yearning for all things kitschy, kid-like, and nostalgic is becoming somewhat of a design trend. Designer Amanda Foster says “there is a move toward showcasing personality” in design, and the stats back her up: According to Pinterest Predicts 2024, searches for kitsch-core items like “aesthetic piggy bank” and “ceramic piggy bank” are up by 35% and 95% on the platform, respectively.
Foster’s own kitchen design incorporates Super Nintendo box covers, and her home has over 100 action figures and 1,000 board games. “I feel like I’m a big kid,” she says. “I don’t want to lose that playfulness in my space.”
Foster says she thinks that people staying home during the pandemic led to an injection of personality in spaces and people wanting to surround themselves with things they love — especially if those things have a cheeriness or nostalgia to them. Years later, the trend is still going strong (think: dopamine decor and other fun-fueled design choices). “I do talk about this a lot with my peers and my clients, and I think that’s what attracts the right people over to me is that they see, ‘Oh my gosh, she’s colorful and fun and she wants to inject personality,’” Foster says.
Kate says her childhood bedroom was first inspired by the Nickelodeon show Clarissa Explains It All. The title character spends much of her time hanging out in her bedroom, which is filled with a quirky mix of handmade-looking and vintage decor.
“I was obsessed with her bedroom as a kid, and my mom helped me to mimic Clarissa’s style by painting my walls four different colors and letting me decorate with hubcaps, license plates, and a stop sign.” Kate says. “Over time, I’ve definitely ended up gravitating towards ’60s and ’70s styles for my home, but I think I owe my fondness for color, kitsch, and weirdness to Clarissa.”
With decor touches from the likes of The Little Mermaid, My Little Pony, and Fern Gully proudly showcased, Kate raided her childhood items in storage and sourced the rest on eBay. But her favorite piece in her childhood bedroom, which is also in today’s re-creation, wasn’t drawn from ’90s pop culture. It was something her dad crafted just for her.
“I especially love the house nightstand that my dad hand-painted,” she says. “We still had it in the basement at my parents’ house, so I brought it out of storage and restored it for my time travel room.”
Kate’s childhood bedroom is almost an exact re-creation, except this time around, she added in some extras: “a few things that I wanted to own but never got to have at the time, like Mall Madness and a Girl Talk phone.”
The nostalgia doesn’t end at Kate’s childhood bedroom. As she shares, the nostalgia is “sprinkled around everywhere” in her home.
“There’s nostalgia for an era I didn’t get to experience with vintage mid-century knickknacks all over the place, and also nostalgia for my own childhood,” she says. “Even outside of the time travel room, there are nods to the ’90s everywhere and lots and lots of family photos.”
Now that you’ve soaked up all the throwback vibes from Kate’s room, you may have thoughts of doing the same in your own home, but maybe thoughts of what people will think are stopping you. Kate says to ignore the outside voices.
“I think a lot of people are scared of decorating in a way that doesn’t seem grown-up enough,” Kate says. “But at the end of the day, I think living in a space that makes you feel happy is all that matters. And if color and goofy decor and throwbacks to your childhood make you happy, I think you should go for it.”
No matter how you choose to make over your own space — whether that’s with a DIY mural or a gallery wall or a funky piece of furniture — if it makes you happy, go for it.