10 Very Memorable Teenage Guy Bedrooms On TV Ranked From "Wow, I Hate This," To "Yeah, I'm Still Jealous"

A TV teen has to have somewhere to solve a murder, angst about the love triangle they're involved in this week, hide a runaway friend, and I guess occasionally study.

Recently, I got sucked down an internet rabbit hole and spent way too long reading articles about iconic teen bedrooms in movies and television. It was oddly fascinating, but I gotta say, think it's really unfortunate that the most commonly mentioned teenage guy rooms were by far Zack Morris' and Dawson Leery's.

CTV / Via tumblr.com

Personally, I think it's worth adding a few more rooms to the conversation if only so we can talk about the rooms of a few guys who aren't completely terrible.

So, I rounded up and ranked 10 memorable teenage guy rooms from television, including six I've never seen mentioned anywhere else.

10. Zack Morris' very '90s use of color and shape on Saved by the Bell

NBC / Via imdb.com

This is certainly memorable. It's really colorful and loud and, okay, look, I'm not gonna lie: I hate this. Those curtains remind me of carpet at the rolling skating rink we'd take field trips to a couple of times a year in elementary school. 

This room as a whole reminds me of the inside of a Discovery Zone. It's an excellent vibe for eating cake and pizza when you were 5 in the '90s. As room decor for a teenager? It's tacky and bad. Sorry. 

Plus, everything here is fairly generic. It's bright and covered in '90s patterns, but it's still generic. Seriously, the model bedrooms at Ikea have more personality than this. Maybe I'm just too young to get this one, but I'm really, really not into it.

9. Dan Humphrey's Brooklyn built-in brick bookshelves on Gossip Girl

The CW / Via images.squarespace-cdn.com

Okay, here's the thing about Dan's room. Unlike Zack Morris' room, I like this. I do. Built-in shelves are a really cool architectural feature in any room. They look even better set into brick. It is inarguable that those shelves in Dan's room are amazing. 

However, I can't rank Dan's room any higher, because a single cool feature doesn't actually make a whole room great. Especially in the case of Gossip Girl, where the shelves honestly seem more like they're part of how the whole Humphrey living space is really fantastic. The rest of Dan's room is really nice and very fitting for the Gossip Girl universe, but it wouldn't be all that memorable without those shelves. (I feel compelled to acknowledge that, much like both Dawson and Zack, Dan Humphrey is also garbage.)

8. Mike Montgomery's cozy dark wood and window seat on Pretty Little Liars

Freeform

You wouldn't think this show would have an entry on this list. Pretty Little Liars was a prime contributor to the weirdly common homeless-teenage-boys-on-television trope, and during one flashback Toby lived in the worst bedroom I have ever seen on television. 

However, Mike Montgomery actually has a pretty great room. Like Dan Humphrey, Mike benefits from his house being overall stellar. The Montgomery house has the coziest interior of any of the main houses in the show, and you can see it in Mike's room. That window seat is amazing. Unlike Dan, I'm giving Mike a few more points for personal touches. The magazine racks, the posters, the clutter — this feels very lived in, and I like that.

You can see that Mike has a poster for Stars' Five Ghosts EP, meaning Mike apparently has excellent taste in music. A very good character note. Plus, Mike's bedroom exists in the beautifully bizarre world of Pretty Little Liars, and over the seasons will be home to exciting things like stolen pottery Jenna Marshall made to give to a man she believed killed a girl, and vials of Mona Vanderwaal's blood. So, you know, it's got that going for it, too.

7. Beck Oliver's neon lights and retro-tech loaded trailer on Victorious

Nickelodeon / Via tumblr.com

Oh, man. This is still so cool. Conceptually, I love this, although maybe not quite as much in retrospect. There is a lot to like here, and I still want to love it. Those vintage suitcases are amazing, and I want them. The metal signs on the walls get an A+ from me and I never complain about records used as decorations. The neon signs, pillows, art, and assorted retro-tech work really well, too.

Unfortunately, this loses some points because I'm not sure it looks like a real teenage boy lives here. The mix of things happening somehow pushes this slightly out of, "decorated with stuff a teenager found in his parent's attic/at a yard sale/at a thrift store," and into, "you're watching Nickelodeon!!" I'm not going to begrudge Nickelodeon having a brand image, but it is a little much in this case. That said, I'm still overall a big fan of this one.

6. Drake and Josh's loft bed and fun levels on Drake and Josh

Nickelodeon

This room does get mentioned often and for good reason. It's the attic bedroom of childhood dreams, and it really stays in one's mind. This room is really visually interesting, and I like that. From the loft bed to those stairs, from that window to the far edge past the couch, this space feels big but cozy all at once. There are great little details and personalization notes here, too. We've got posters, stickers, license plates, and CD stacks. This room has a lot going on, but it somehow manages to be understated.

I personally really love the colors and the soft-looking, slightly beat-up furniture here, too. I seriously debated which of the Nickelodeon rooms on this list to give the edge, and in the end, I went with this one. Unlike Beck's trailer, this does feel like an actual room that real teenagers decorated and live in. I really do like this one.

5. Stiles Stilinski's murder-solving headquarters on Teen Wolf

MTV, MTV / Via tumblr.com

I really, really love this room overall. There is a great mix of cozy and chaotic happening here, and I enjoy that. This is well done. It looks great, It's super personalized, and it's incredibly in character. I'm not going to lie, though: one of the major reasons this room is so high on the list is that glorious mystery board.

A mystery board is a trope in this genre, but Stiles' is ridiculously elevated from the standard. This is not a simple chalkboard or a corkboard. This is a clear dry erase board. Clues are taped on and connected with strings. It is fantastic. All the other murder and/or mystery-solving teens on TV should be jealous of how cool this thing is. Hell, I would absolutely risk my life as a murder-solving TV teen just for the chance to use this mystery board. Seriously, this room overall is excellent, and I'm here for it.

4. Dawson Leery's movie memorabilia and infamous window on Dawson's Creek

The WB

I'm conflicted about this one. Personally? I hate this. To me, this looks like a Pottery Barn and a Blockbuster exploded all over it, and I'm not here for it. However, unlike Zack Morris' room, this isn't remotely generic. Dawson's room is incredibly perfect for Dawson. It's filled with a ton of tiny little details that feel realistic and really well thought out. I completely believe that every item in this room is something that Dawson Leery would choose for himself. The fact that I personally hate it doesn't change that. I also find Dawson to be the actual worst, and his room is still on my list.

I fully appreciate that this is really well done. I fully appreciate that for Dawson, for this show, for Capeside, and for 1998, this room is exactly what this show should have done. This room is actually great in so many ways, and I realize that. It's just not my thing at all. So I'm gonna leave this ranked at a respectable 4 and move on.

3. Kyle Trager's bathtub bed and basement bedroom on Kyle XY

Freeform

This room has been stuck in my head for years now. You really have to give it a lot of points. In context, letting Kyle have a bathtub bed is an incredibly caring way to make him feel safe enough to actually sleep. On paper, this is a family taking in a foster kid and having him sleep in a bathtub in their basement. That should be horrifying and prompt a call to child services. Kyle XY manages to make this look outright comfortable and appealing. This room is charming, cozy, and very character-driven. That's pretty impressive for the circumstances.

I'm just really into this one in general. I'm not gonna shop for bathtub beds anytime soon, but the whole vibe in this room is this blend of rustic and tech-forward that ends up working really well. There are a lot of tiny little touches in this room that grow over the seasons. Kyle is a kid who literally had no memories or sense of self at all when this show starts. It would have been so easy to go very generic on his room, but instead, we get this room that will go from simple to more and more personal over the seasons. I love that.

2. Eli Goldsworthy's skulls and retro bar decor on Degrassi

CTV, CTV / Via youtube.com

Oh, Degrassi. Oh wow, Degrassi. I'm not sure any of my images here are fully doing justice to this one, but, wow. Eli's room is so much. It's over-the-top as hell. Don't get me wrong, it's number 2 because I love it, but wow, Degrassi. There is so much going on here. There is just stuff everywhere in Eli's room. This is like one of those Seek and Find puzzles. You could stare at Eli's room for hours and just keep finding random little trinkets. It's a slinky! It's a dartboard! It's a...thing!

I love these shots of Eli's sitting at his desk writing and just being surrounded by like, half a vintage store. Eli's room also gets points because a lot of the little random stuff will change out throughout the seasons, so there's always something to see. I do have slight pause at how much all this would probably cost, but it's not enough that this feels unrealistic or anything.

Seriously, I love this one. It's a real shame we never see it again after the end of Season 12. The downgrade to that NYU dorm room is a major letdown. There's a metaphor for how bad Season 13 is overall in there somewhere, but I'm getting off track.

1. And at No. 1, Derek Venturi's absolute chaos on Life With Derek

Family Channel/ Shaftesbury / Via youtube.com, Family Channel/ Shaftesbury / Via youtube.com

Somewhere deep in my garbage millennial heart, I will always be jealous of this bedroom. Derek's room is the winner by a fairly large margin. There are more pictures of this below because two images just don't capture it all. This is chaos. This is full-on chaos in the best possible way, and I love every single thing about it. This room uses every bit of wall space to its full advantage, and it works so well. That record wall lives rent-free in my brain where it will likely never leave. Plus, look, I'm gonna be honest: this isn't just my favorite room on this list. This is easily one of my favorite television room sets of all time.

In all seriousness, looking back at this as an adult genuinely really impresses me. It's not just that I always wanted this room. It's that these walls are filled with things like flyers, gig posters, magazine pullouts and cutouts, the kind of posters that came inside CD cases sometimes, print-shop-looking posters promoting Derek's own band in multiple colors, and advertisements for what appears to be local events. Free stuff, is what I'm saying.

With very few exceptions, these walls are covered in things that look like they would have cost Derek all of zero dollars. Even some of the big, eye-catching things could have been free or very cheap. It's incredibly likely those records were free/found, but if they were bought? There's no way they were more than a dollar apiece. I love that. There are a few things here and there that clearly would have cost actual money, they're just surrounded by things that look like this kid might have found them in the bottom of his backpack. Derek's room is by far the most hyper-personalized to the character room on this list, down to the fact that it legitimately looks like something easily with a teenager's limited budget and decorating abilities.

I'm pretty sure it is the actual best. I'm not saying you need to agree this room is one of your favorite TV rooms of all time, or even that it's your favorite on this list. I am saying that Derek's room and at least a few others on this list should be part of the ionic teen bedrooms conversation.

Family Channel/ Shaftesbury / Via youtube.com, Family Channel/ Shaftesbury / Via youtube.com

A couple more angles on Derek's room to close out the post because there was more to see.

Do you love these as much as I do? Were there any I missed that you also love? Let me know in the comments below.