A Room They’ll Love

Children’s rooms lend themselves well to having a fun, imaginative or inspirational theme, and creating the idea isn’t as difficult or expensive as you think.

Your child needs to enjoy their room so getting their input is important. Children from toddler age up will be able to give their opinion. Older children will probably want more control over how their room looks and they might have some definite ideas that clash with your own – deep purple walls could be just want they want, and the opposite to what you think is appealing or practical!

Try to find a compromise. Perhaps darker coloured furnishings, paintings and accessories will appease your child while avoiding having to paint the walls black. If this doesn’t work, consider allowing them to have one wall or alcove featuring wallpaper in their chosen colour or design.

You can be as creative with your theme as you like. In fact, the more imaginative the better as the décor will really engage your child. Anything from a splash of complementary colours to their favourite subject will be welcomed as it shows an extension of their personality and makes the room feel like their space.

Popular themes include fairies, princesses, jungle animals, the seaside, trains, sports or cartoon characters

Once you’ve agreed on the general idea you can get to work designing a mood board. This can either be done on a large piece or paper using catalogue or magazine pictures and fabric samples, or digitally using a platform such as Pinterest.

Give yourself time to generate ideas around the main theme, this will also ensure that both you and your little one are genuinely happy with it before committing to decorating.

Note down thoughts about colours, textures and motifs that will help bring your theme together. A seaside theme for example will feature lots of blue and white, boats, anchors, lighthouses, ropes and seashells.

There are masses of kids’ furniture for any theme you’d care to think of. A good tip is to stick to buying smaller items such as storage boxes, bedding sets and curtains that complement your theme.

Children’s tastes inevitably change so you don’t want to be stuck with a huge set of boat shelves and nowhere to put them. Instead, paint furniture to match the colour scheme.

Also keep your walls and carpet neutral. You can easily liven up the room with pictures, wallpaper borders, wall stickers and decals, rugs, lampshades and mobiles. This lets you design the room around the current theme while giving you the chance to easily update as your child grows.

Avoid anything too permanent unless you have a love (and budget) for frequent redecorating.

Finally, you don’t have to splash out on an elaborate theme. Using a few accessories relating to your child’s interest may be just what you need to give the finishing touch. Add a mobile or new lampshade, change their bedding or curtains.

Creating a display of relevant toys, books or ornaments on a shelf, for example monkey toys to complement a jungle theme, doesn’t cost anything and can help to bring the theme together.

---

---