15 Things Every Teen Had in Their Bedroom in the ’80s (Plus 5 That Might Surprise You)
Step into a time machine and take a peek inside an ’80s teen’s bedroom. It was a world of neon colors, cassette tapes, and unmistakable pop culture influences.
Back then, your bedroom wasn’t just a place to sleep but a reflection of who you were, your taste in music, your favorite movies, and even your biggest crushes.
Whether you were jamming out to your Walkman or calling your best friend on a Garfield phone, these 20 items were essential for every ’80s teen.
1. Cassette Tape Collection
Before streaming, before CDs, and even before Napster, the ultimate music collection lived on cassette tapes. Every teen had stacks of tapes featuring their favorite bands, carefully recorded mixtapes, and maybe even a few bootleg concert recordings.
If you wanted to hear a song again, you had to rewind and guess when to stop—sometimes overshooting it multiple times.
2. Boombox
The bigger the boombox, the better. Whether blasting Madonna, Prince, or Bon Jovi, every teen had one perched somewhere in their room, covered in stickers or neon graffiti.
And if you were lucky enough to have one with a double cassette deck, you could make mixtapes for your friends or record your favorite songs straight from the radio—usually with the DJ talking over the intro.
3. Glow-in-the-Dark Stars
Because what’s cooler than staring up at a fake night sky while listening to power ballads before bed? These plastic stick-on stars were a must-have for any teen looking to create some late-night ambiance.
The problem? They never quite stuck properly, and you’d often wake up with one stuck to your forehead or find them scattered on the floor in the morning.
4. Rotary or Push-Button Phone
If you were lucky, you had your own phone line; if not, you had to fight for the family phone. Either way, teens spent hours lying on their beds, twirling the cord while gossiping with friends.
And if your parents ever picked up the other line to listen in, you’d hear that dreaded click and know your conversation was no longer private.
5. Celebrity Crush Poster
From Tom Hanks to Molly Ringwald, every teen had at least one heartthrob staring down from their walls.
Some took it further and had entire “shrine walls” dedicated to their favorite stars, carefully curated from magazine clippings and glossy posters pulled from Tiger Beat and Seventeen.
6. Rubik’s Cube
It looked so simple in theory, but only the most dedicated could actually solve it without peeling off the stickers (yes, we know your secret).
It sat on dressers and desks as both a decoration and an unsolved puzzle that taunted you daily—until you eventually shoved it in a drawer in frustration.
7. Trapper Keeper
Even when school was out, Trapper Keepers were a staple of ’80s bedrooms, often stuffed with random notes, drawings, and top-secret folded-up love letters.
The loud Velcro sound when opening it was practically an announcement that you were about to get serious about something—even if it was just doodling in the margins of your notebook.
8. Bean Bag Chair
No bedroom was complete without a giant, overstuffed bean bag chair—perfect for lounging, gaming, or just sinking into oblivion after a long day of school.
After a while, though, they’d start losing their shape, and you’d find yourself basically sitting on the floor surrounded by a sad, lumpy sack of Styrofoam beads.
9. Record Player
Vinyl wasn’t just for parents—teens had their own stacks of albums featuring bands like Journey, The Police, and Van Halen.
Dropping the needle on a record felt like a ritual, and nothing was worse than scratching your favorite LP and hearing that dreaded pop every time it played.
10. VHS Tapes
Before Netflix and DVRs, the only way to rewatch your favorite shows was to record them—complete with awkwardly-timed commercial breaks you forgot to edit out.
And nothing was more devastating than someone recording over your favorite movie because they didn’t check the label first.
11. Lava Lamp
Did it serve a purpose? Not really. But the slow-moving blobs of glowing wax were mesmerizing enough to make it a bedroom essential.
It was the ultimate background decoration—something to stare at while zoning out or chatting on the phone.
12. Atari or NES Console
Gaming in the ’80s was a serious pastime, and if you had an Atari 2600 or a Nintendo Entertainment System hooked up to your TV, you were officially the coolest kid on the block.
Blowing into the cartridges to “fix” them was basically a skill every gamer had mastered.
13. Alarm Clock Radio
Nothing said “good morning” quite like the sound of your alarm clock radio struggling to find a station as it blasted distorted music at sunrise.
And if you forgot to set it properly, you’d wake up late and have to sprint to catch the school bus.
14. Desktop Fan
Whether to cool down a room that always seemed too hot or to provide much-needed white noise, every teen had a cheap plastic fan humming away in the background.
The older it got, the louder and more rattly it became—until it eventually sounded like a jet engine taking off.
15. Mad Magazines
Before the internet gave us memes, we had Mad Magazine to deliver snarky satire and hilarious comic strips.
Teens would spend hours flipping through pages of Alfred E. Neuman’s antics, laughing at the absurdity of pop culture parodies.
16. Homework Desk
Sure, it had books and papers on it, but it was mostly a landing spot for whatever junk had nowhere else to go.
The chair was often just a place to toss clothes, and the actual workspace was cluttered with everything except schoolwork.
17. Tacky Bedspread
Neon, geometric, or covered in weirdly loud patterns, ’80s bedding was a statement piece all on its own.
You didn’t just sleep under it—you lived in it, often sprawled out with a Walkman on, lost in a world of daydreams.
18. Stuffed Animals
Even the toughest teens still had a beloved plush toy stashed somewhere in the room, even if they pretended it wasn’t theirs.
It usually sat on a shelf, half-hidden behind something else, because you swore you were too old for it—but you’d never get rid of it.
19. Scratch-and-Sniff Stickers
These weren’t just for kids—teens had them too, and they would proudly collect them in sticker books or slap them onto notebooks.
The “pizza” one always smelled questionable, but that didn’t stop you from scratching it repeatedly.
20. Slinky
It was fun for about five minutes before it inevitably became a useless, twisted mess—but somehow, we all still had one.
No matter how hard you tried to fix it, once it bent out of shape, it was game over.