I am not shy about being nerdy, I will talk anyone’s ear off about board games. That said, and as the previous paragraph implies, I want my living space to be functional for nerdy things, but for other things as well. So I don’t want every inch of the place to look like a massive board game fan lives here, unless I have enough games for all of it.

Bold or Subtle

As I talk about this, I am sitting in a very nerdy room. I have board games everywhere around me, I have action figures for comics, movies, and anime, there are D&D books and comics on shelves as well as classic video games. This room is a very bold and nerdy room. I even have expansion box covers on the floor that I am going to be putting up on the walls. This is a very bold and nerdy room.

On the flip side, in our living room. It looks pretty standard. Yes, there is a Switch and a PS4 hooked up to the TV. And yes, one of the pieces of art does have a T.A.R.D.I.S. as part of it. But it’s the subtle little pops of nerdiness that you might not notice if you aren’t looking for them. Like, in the kitchen on the sill next to the sink, there is a baby Yoda little figure. It isn’t something that you’d notice walking into the room, but it is there.

Why talk about this, because not every room needs to be so obviously nerdy. I don’t need a Kallax of board games in my living room. I don’t need movie posters hung up there. But in some of the other rooms, I can really lean into the nerdiness. When thinking about decorating nerdy, I don’t think people should hide the fact that they are nerdy. I proudly show off my game room to people. But with that, I also don’t think every room needs to be only nerdy.

Decorate for Function

What do I mean by this? Well, in my gaming room, I can make it super nerdy, because it is meant to be very nerdy. The room has a single focus, to play board games. The room with the games at our old house, that was for storing games and a guest bedroom. So I shouldn’t have gone crazy in that room and made it all nerdy with all the decorations because, it had to function as a bedroom as well. Here, I can have a gaming table and it’s all good.

But on the flip side, consider the function of your living room or kitchen. Those are supposed to function as well, a kitchen and a living room. If I were to put game shelves in our living room and a gaming table, I have now changed the function of that room. And I don’t just have people over to play board games. I want to hang out, maybe watch a movie, play with the toddler, have conversations, host holidays, things like that. If I were to make the living room extremely nerdy, it would no longer meet that functional requirement, and the house as a whole wouldn’t.

That is why the living room and kitchen might have those nerdy pops, but they aren’t completely nerdy. They aren’t going to be a space where it loses the functionality of the room in order to be nerdy. Now, this varies with your living situation, when I lived as a bachelor in an apartment, I could have the main areas be nerdier. Why, because I didn’t have the excess space for a game room, for a library. Everything had to be in the main area.

But What Do You Decorate With?

Well, let’s talk about our three nerdy rooms to be. I say to be because the theater room will get finished over time and the library will be getting it’s wall creating it in June and the start of July.

The Gaming Room

With the gaming room, I have just gone all over the place with nerdy. Right now since I have comics in here, I went with comics as well as just some other posters and things that I had. But I am going to be changing it up. The comics will likely stay, but there are a few things that I want to do.

Firstly, I have expansion box covers, and this actually drove some of the thinking. With that expansion box covers, I want to put them up on the wall to create some cool art. In particular I have 5 box covers for Marvel United that I can put up which will bridge that gap between the games and the comics. It also means that I don’t feel bad about throwing away the rest of the boxes and condensing stuff down, because now I got some art.

I also want to add in some hanging shelves or maybe even a plate rail. A plate rail is basically a thin shelf with a little lip that generally goes up pretty high in a room. If I were to get that, I could start to story and display the action figures up there but as well minis that I have painted to show them off. For example, all the Marvel United minis that need to be painted. All of that together would give it a cohesive feeling for gaming.

The Theater Room

I won’t talk about this one as much because I already have talked about it. You can find that in the article on Building a Home Theater. But to do a quick recap, we are going to have movie posters on the wall or TV show posters, we have a popcorn machine and we have some soft lighting to give it more of that movie theater feel. We want it to be a cozy space, as well, though, for sitting and enjoying a movie, so we have a futon, a 6″ long bean bag chair, and a chair down there.

As the room gets finished off, I might add in some sound dampening and I am guessing we’ll paint it a darker color so that the screen doesn’t reflect off the walls as much. Basically, we want it to feel a bit like a theater and mainly like a really relaxing place to watch a show or a movie.

The Library

Finally, we have the library. The library we are going to be focused on a few things. We had some fairy pictures that we had in a bathroom at our old place. Now we don’t have room for that, so they will go in the library. Along with that we are going to be adding in other book related nerdy things. We have a Hobbit throw pillow, a Sherlock Holmes cutout, and Kristen is going to go create a book nook.

The book nook is going to fall in line with books as well fairies as it is going to be a like a little fairy themed one. I think that will be fun to really be that subtle nerdy things in an already very nerdy room. I like it when a space has enough going on in it that you are looking and finding new things over time. This also works well with subtle things.

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At a basic level, there are going to be two primary things that you’ll need for your gaming room. The first is a place to play the games, and the next is a place to store the games. However, you can certainly bling it out more than that, but let’s start by talking about those two things.

The Table

The table, and this includes the chairs is going to be fairly important as you think about setting up the room. Consider things like how large your games are, now many people you want around the table, and how much overall space you have. If you’re playing something like Gloomhaven, you’re going to need a bigger table than if you normally only play games like Santorini and Hanamikoji. Or even a game like Deception: Murder in Hong Kong, you’re going to need space to get a larger group around the table, even though the footprint of the game isn’t that large. So look at the largest game, numbers wise and space wise to determine how large a table you might need. Now, that might not work for the room you’re using, it could be too large, in that case, consider the games that you will be playing most down there, and you can move the bigger games elsewhere for playing.

With this also consider your playing surface. You can go out and find a lot of premium gaming tables that cost $1000+ and are going to be amazing to play on with built in cup holders, rails for holding cards, a sunken play and padding place surface and more fun things like that, but that’s probably overkill. Most of the time, an old dining room/kitchen table will do. What I’d consider when thinking about that is what sort of surface do you need for it? There are a few different options to allow you to be able to pick up cards easier, felt or neoprene. Both of these have a little give, and if you have trouble picking up cards at times like I do, it might be something you’d want to invest in. Felt works well because you can stretch it and staple it to the underside of the top of the table and it’ll give you a nice playing surface. That’s what I’ve done for the table that I use for Malts and Meeples streaming. This will give you a consistent top across the table, but it does pick up dust, another option would be buying a neoprene mat to put on top of it. This is going to be higher quality, and it’ll allow you to more easily swap out the surface of the table since you can just roll up the mat, but it’s a spendier option, but still cheaper than getting a premium gaming table.

Storage

Storage is another big thing to consider, how do you want to display your games. This could be for aesthetic reasons, but mainly it’s going to be so that you know what games you have. If you’re using a bedroom and you shove them into a deep closet, the ones in front will get played, the ones in back will not. This is just simply do to the visibility of the games in front versus the back.

The most common suggestion that you’ll hear are Kallax shelves from Ikea. Or Better Homes and Garden cubby shelves are basically the same things. The cubbies are basically the right side for a board game, in a normal sided square box, to fit nicely. They can be stored either vertically or horizontally. I have a Kallax and it works really well. You can even find them used, fairly often it’ll be the older version of the Kallax, Expedit, but basically the same thing and same sized cubbies. The Better Homes and Garden one I believe is slightly lower quality, but more readily available since it’s at Wal-Mart. But really, any bookshelf will do, it just might not store quite as neatly. And plastic shelving works well, as well.

That’s really it that you’ll need for storing and playing your games, but let’s talk about some other things to think about that you might want to do.

Some of these are going to be additional decor, I know people who hang box covers, especially for expansions they’ve fit into one box, on the fall, or Board Game Geek sells some amazing art prints for various games. Etsy is another place that has good art.

Lighting is another big thing to think about. Indirect lighting for the games are going to be best. By that, I mean having a big light on the ceiling pointed down is probably not the best. It’s going to create glare off of boards and cards and make them harder to read. Floor lamps where the light is directed up and can reflect down off the ceiling are going to give you an easier light to see the board and cards. But also having enough lighting is important as well so that you can read the cards without straining. So sit around the table from each side some evening and see how it is to see a hand of cards.

Now, finally, I want to talk about seating. I said that was implied with the table, but most tables you can cram more people around than chairs that come with the table. So consider picking up some folding chairs and test out the folding chairs to see that they’re comfortable. Folding chairs have definitely improved since hard metal ones to stronger and more supportive feeling plastic seats and backs. Find something that feels comfortable to you and that you think will be comfortable to anyone who might join in the gaming fun.

What else should you have in a game room? I mean, you need games, but I’m assuming, if you’re thinking about a particular game room, you probably already have a lot of those, like I do. Also, tweet pictures of your game room to me, for future inspiration.

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