Please could I ask for advice on decorating dd's small, dark attic room?

[Devora]

dd is 10 and has a small attic bedroom, north-facing. She is under the slope so there is little height or wall space. She currently has a mid-sleeper with room underneath for storage or a slouching area (beanbags). The room is painted white with a beige carpet. I've deliberately kept it neutral so I can easily change the colour scheme through cheap accessories. Currently the bedding, bedside table etc are blue/green.

dd really wants an overhaul and the room could do with it, but I'm a bit stumped on what to do. She isn't a girly girl and won't want pink/purple but is not expressing a view on what she does want. I don't have much of a budget. Any advice on colours etc would be appreciated, but I'd particularly like to ask:

• ideas on how to store clothes when there is nowhere to put a wardrobe (we're currently just folding them into white crates on shelves)?

• ideas on seating for dd and friends - small sofa, or are bean bags better?

• views on whether I should keep the room white/pale neutral, or is there something to be said for accepting it will never be a light spacious room, and decorating dark with white accents?

On a different note have you thought of putting in another velux window. This has made a massive difference to our attic room and wasn't nearly as pricey as I thought it might be.

Bean bags are extremely popular with our DC and suit attic rooms with an odd shape far better than a sofa would.

Can you suspend a clothes rail from the ceiling?

I've also seen someone recommend silver paint [more white than grey] for a small northfacing room. It was a bathroom in that case but it might also work

Wow, this thread just keeps giving. I feel like I've found my own interior design consultancy! Thanks so much everybody.

BoboChic, I love grey so will just have to persuade dd, and HansSolo thanks I will definitely search for that thread. Is painting the ceiling the same colour still a good idea if using grey? Won't it feel like living in a box?

dd currently has two small vintage mirrors in her room, but I'm thinking an oversized mirror would make a great statement and really reflect the light.

Robertaquimby, There are already two velux windows - one is the fire escape. That has caused me a fair bit of worry as it can't be kept locked, but comes right down to floor level. When we moved in dd was 4 and managed to open it in about 3 minutes, so I've blocked it with a child's wardrobe rail (blocks it from temptation but is light enough for a child to pull it out of the way if they need to). But dd is now old enough to be trusted (I hope) and the wardrobe rail is too short to be useful. So if I get rid of that there will be more light, and I can put a sofa cube in that corner.

Treadsoftly silver paint is a really interesting idea. Do you mean silver silver, or a light silvery grey?

Bobo - nearly the whole ceiling is sloped, very steeply, and I can't work out where a hanging rail would go. If it was to go at the highest point, it would feel like it was filling the room. It can't go over the bed, and the third wall would bang into the door. The fourth wall is only 2ft high. Hmm. I may need to accept it's not possible, and find a solution out of the room. On the landing outside there is a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf where I currently keep the children's books. I'm loath to get rid of it (we are a many book family) but it would be an option to put a very narrow wardrobe there (would probably have to be custom built).

Is there room for a hanging rail on underside of bed? Or off the end of the bed? Maybe try looking at IKEA kitchen stuff for hanging solutions. If it can be used to dangle a pot or a utensil in a kitchen, it can surely hang some clothes in a bedroom.

Or is there room for an IKEA Stuva wardrobe? (Not very French attic, but compact!) m.ikea.com/gb/en/catalog/systems/18681/18835/18836/?chapterId=

For the paint colours, we used white on the ceiling, the slope and the stumpy bit of wall below the slope, and the primrose on the other 3 walls. Worked nicely because there wasn't yellow overload but we also weren't trying to invent straight lines where there were none.

The pic I saw was a light silver paint. Shimmery without being sparkly. 'Twas very nice against grey tiles.

Looked like this www.diy.com/departments/craig-rose-opulence-diamond-dust-glitter-effect-special-effect-paint-250ml/126812_BQ.prd?icamp=recs

They also do a glitter glaze which might be fun for a child.
www.craigandrose.com/inspiration/all-that-glitters

3point, I reckon most things can be kept in drawers under the bed (specially for a dd who is not into frocks). For those few things that really do need to be hung up, I think I'll find somewhere to put a couple of hooks. As she gets older, we may need to revisit the wardrobe thing.

Treadsoftly, that looks like it would be fantastic if she decided to go the futuristic route rather than vintage garret. I can see it working really well with Bertie's suggestion of LED strips.

Ok.
This is one of my all-time favourite bedrooms

This shows the colour extended up to the ceiling

This shows a bed but into the side of the roof which is quite space saving

This is another version (that I have seen in Living etc, the whole house is lovely)

This has a nice dark wall, and is screened off by a curtain

This is just quite sweet

This is a link to Apartment Therapy article about attic bedrooms.

This was the greys thread (sorry- took me ages to find it, it was older than I thought!

This one gives some ideas for lilac greys which would probably work well in an attic room.

HansSolo, there's some beautiful ideas there. I think pretty much all those rooms have more space than dd's (certainly higher) but I'm sure there's something I can adapt.

Have you got pics of her room ? Or a budget? I had an attic room as a teen and my parents put in built in wardrobes under the eaves. I couldn't store floor length dresses [ah - all those teen ballgowns] but it was absolutely fine. We put in storage the length of the eaves with a desk under the window. Doing built in furniture definitely made the most of the space.

I had a tall bed with a pull out bed underneath that popped up. If it was open there was no available floor space but it served me fine if I wanted a friend to stay overnight occasionally.

A small room also taught me to throw lots of shit out A useful life skill.