The bedroom was and still is the teenager’s retreat. A kind of cave where parents are not welcome, where you dream, suffer disappointments in love, sing and dance. This is still the case, despite the fact that much has changed in the last 40 years, first of all because technology came to take control of their lives compared to the 80s of the last century when having a Spectrum could be considered the pinnacle of TIC. But there was music and it made young people dream and fight to have the company of their pop idols in the bedroom… even if it was on paper. A throwback to the teen bedrooms of the 1980s, compared to today. Discover the differences.

Poster covered walls

Teeneger, who was a teenager in the 1980s, had his bedroom wall covered with posters. He was essential. The money he gave himself for lunch at school – the allowances of which were not yet very fashionable – was very often saved to buy the German magazine Bravo. No one could read what was written there, but what really mattered was getting the posters out onto a small blank space on the wall. Nena (who didn’t hum 99 Luftballons?), Duran Duran and Kajagoogoo (all masters of a hairstyle that many wanted but few dared to copy) and even the German footballer Rummenigge were regulars at the magazine. Like Michael Jackson, Modern Talking, Samantha Fox and so many others. There was still a Portuguese edition, but it was far from reaching the success that the German magazine had in the 1980s.

Online, die-hard collectors still find some relics to buy, like this Samantha Fox poster originally published with a Swedish magazine.

In addition to Bravo, there was another way to get the coveted posters: record stores (vinyl, of course!) had a lot to offer and although Julio Iglesias and Roberto Carlos contrasted with pop figures, who would reject them? After all, who didn’t know how to sing As Baleias by heart?

Without Bluetooth speakers or Spotify, teens in the ’80s had more spacious objects to listen to music: cassette players and “stereo”. Not everyone was lucky enough to have the “stereo” piece of furniture in the bedroom – it added a record player, a radio and, as a rule, two cassette players, allowing them to listen and record at the same time – but those who they had it were in the seven farms. The two speakers took up considerable space, but who cared?

The typewriter and the specter

On the desk of a young man from the 80s of the last century there were no PCs or laptops. Typewriters occupied the writing space and the gifted girl of those times even took the typing course.

Still far from sophisticated consoles, here is the old ZX Spectrum, to connect to the TV, also another noteworthy antique.

But there was the ZX Spectrum, and everyone who owned it was the target of great envy at school, before the microcomputer started to go mainstream. A Spectrum was reason to bring a bunch of friends home to play Pacman or Match Point. Today they are basic games, but the computer connected to the television and allowed color images. Those who enjoyed this “machine” at the time were far from imagining the importance of the Portuguese engineering of the Timex company in the manufacture of thousands of computers across borders.

Suffer for a collection of stickers

Only those who were young in the 80s of the last century know what it took to add to the sticker collection. What it cost to get a Pepsi or Coca-Cola sticker! The soccer world championships were a great help in this demand, since the associated brands used to issue stickers. Each time they were repeated, they were exchanged like stickers to fill a notebook. There were those who, to the great despair of the mothers, stuck them on the glass of the bedroom window, a kind of display of an external sign of wealth that left many who passed by with envy.

Back in the days when you’d give a kidney for a bumper sticker, or the importance an entire collection assumed in the life of the average teenager. Stop by OLX if you’ve been feeling nostalgic and look up classics like these.

They were stickers, yes, more sophisticated, in washable material (at least the mothers could not complain) that gave a 10 to zero to the paper stickers with the dog Super Maxi from Olá!

The passport photo package

In the digital age, young people have their photos – and videos – stored on their cell phones or computers, but there are also those who print some photos to decorate their room, pinning them to a wooden or cork board. And in a cozier version of decoration, fix them with clips on a wire, like a clothesline. In the 1980s, anyone who wanted photos took them with Kodak or Poloroid and had to print them out. So many disappointments that have happened, how many and how many times “the moment” faltered and in a roll of 24 only 10 or 12 dolls were used?

[Vários modelos de máquinas fotográficas, o mesmo grau de ansiedade e expectativa: será que ficou boa? Nos anos 80, saber esperar não era apenas uma virtude, mas uma inevitabilidade. Eis um anúncio saído dessa era]

But all was not lost, as it was customary to offer friends a passport photo, sometimes with a dedication. Many young people carried them on their desks, and the volume increased with the number of photographs. There was also the option to paste them on the desktop or simply save them… to remember them later.

Colored walls and carpets

The walls were painted in strong tones, but far from the modern term “warm colors”. Pink for girls, blue for boys, mostly. The “white nature”, widely used today, were tones that did not fit in the bedroom of a teenager from the 80s of the last century, as in the rest of the house. Faded colors would be considered. In the 1980s it was visible outside and this trend extended within the four walls where young people spent hours and hours, surely not as many as today because it was not yet the age of technology.

At first glance, it might look like a creature from another planet, but it’s just a harmless rug (and you can still find it for sale, if you’re hell-bent on filling your home with nostalgia).

The floor followed the trend of interior decoration, both beautiful wooden floors covered by high-pile carpets, the most comfortable, at a time when little or nothing was said about allergies. And once again here the colors were repeated, making panda with the tone of the walls.