Decorating children’s bedrooms used to be pretty simple: choices were usually limited to a sports theme in primary colors for boys or a pastel princess look for girls. But today’s kids crave a room that’s a more personalized expression of their own unique interests and style. This may sound like a daunting task, but you can break it down into a few simple stages. First, pick a theme or style that reflects your child’s interests and run with it. In a kid’s room, restraint is not really an issue: in fact, they’ll probably think it’s pretty great if you go over the top with a bold color scheme and fun accessories. Here are a few ideas to get your creative juices flowing:
- Odyssey Under the Sea: Is your little munchkin particularly taken with the wild blue yonder? Create a room that reflects that interest by painting the walls a deep blue, stenciling, or applying wallpaper pictures of fish, whales, and other sea creatures, and creating rows of “portholes” with a line of circle-shaped mirrors. Personalize it with other seafaring accessories the kid of honor helps select, such as seashells, fishing nets, and life preservers.
- Bring a Favorite Storybook to Life: Whether it’s Peter Rabbit or Alice in Wonderland, you can use your imagination and a little elbow grease to turn your child’s room into a three-dimensional version of their most cherished fairy tale. For this project, wallpaper, a painted mural, or extensive stenciling is important to create a feeling of total immersion in the theme. Select furniture and accents that emphasize the theme subtly, such as overstuffed armchairs with formal lines to suggest the tea party from Alice in Wonderland or white wicker to reflect the English garden style that Peter Rabbit brings to mind. Tie it all together with coordinating artwork, perhaps using framed pages of an old first edition of the book.
- Go Color Crazy: Is your child passionate about purple? Bonkers over blue? Ga-ga for green? Well, indulge her color love by basing an entire bedroom design around it. Use different, but harmonious, shades of the same color to provide interesting contrasts, and pair with black and white accents for a snappy, up-to-date look. Painted effects such as tone-on-tone stripes or polka dots make great wall art.