Should You Theme Your Child’s Bedroom?
Redecorating a child’s bedroom can be a task filled with tense negotiations with your little ones. As much as you convince your child they won’t be obsessed with their favourite TV show in two years time, it will fall on deaf ears. Children are fickle, and they may want to be a fireman today, but in a year they may be completely obsessed with dinosaurs. Because of this, theming a child’s bedroom can be a risky choice when giving the walls and furniture a refresh. However, there are ways to keep both child and parents happy!
The Case For A Theme
Theming a child’s room doesn’t have to be costly and irreversible. Plenty of theming elements are removable and changeable, such as wall stickers, bed linen, pillows and toys. This means you don’t have to put your foot down on theming entirely. A child’s bedroom is their most precious private space, it’s where they relax, play and learn. Theming a child’s room can encourage the imagination and make a child feel at home and comfortable (especially if they have recently moved home!). It’s also a lot of fun for the child!
A child’s taste is very different to an adults’, and however subtle and classy your house looks, sometimes you just have to give in and splash bright colours onto your child’s wall. Try not to buy themed wallpaper as this will end up costing you in the long run – in both money and the time it takes to tear it down! Be imaginative with your theming elements – impactful but easily changed, such as curtains and framed pictures.
Whatever you do, make sure you don’t theme your storage. Painted wardrobe doors, drawers or themed furniture will eventually end up looking dated and will end up in the dump. The storage in a child’s bedroom is the most important part, make sure it fits in with the room but remains neutral. This applies particularly to fitted furniture.
How to Avoid a Theme
If your child is obsessed with a rather garish colour (I was really into retina burning magenta myself), a good way to match the room to the rest of the house while still keeping your child happy is to paint an ‘accent wall’ while painting the other walls neutral colours or lighter versions of the colour in question (popular choices are bright red with subtler peach colours, and turquoise mixed with sky blue).
A fantastic compromise is to use a cork board or magnet board – the bigger the better – to cover one of your prominent walls. This is perfect for older children who want to be creative and create collages of all the things they like with posters, pictures, photographs and postcards. This will also come in handy when your child becomes a tween/teen and the inevitable pop star posters start appearing. The corkboard isn’t pretty to look at, but can become something beautiful (and easily edited!) when you and your child get to work on it.
The key to decorating a child’s room is making sure it is durable and practical while still keeping it a fun and creative space.
A final tip – make sure your child is involved with all the decisions that go into decorating their room, themed or not – they will love it so much more when they know they had a hand in the interior design!