Art for Children's Rooms
Decorate a Baby Nursery, Toddler Room, or Play Area
Bright colors, simple shapes, and teaching themes are all you need when it comes to putting art in a child's room.
To a newly decorated space, artwork is like the cherry on top of an ice cream sundae. It pulls all the elements together and completes the look. With children’s rooms, art adds color and interest, and, depending on the type of pieces you choose, can serve double-duty as a learning experience for the kids who live there.
When choosing what to hang on the walls, you aren't locked in to what is on the shelves at your local baby goods store. With the trend in decorating modern nurseries and other kid spaces comes a growing market of fun and funky art options for the little tot in your life. Scour the Internet and specialty shops in your area for modern art you and your children will love.
Choosing a Right Art
The trick to getting the right look with children’s art is not to have a theme, at least not in the sense of having cartoon characters or the same teddy bear print used on every accessory throughout the room. However, you can still stick with designs that are kid-friendly such as animals, transportation or food.
Look for images that aren’t too complicated but include clean lines and simple silhouettes. This makes the pictures easily identifiable, helping children learn about things around them as they look at the artwork every day. Remember, children are like sponges soaking up knowledge from everything they see. Keeping this in mind, hanging artwork using the alphabet, numbers, or shapes works perfectly in kid spaces. Here are some other tips:
- Color: Babies and children love bright, contrasting colors. Go with basic red, blue, green, and yellow or try other color combinations such as hot pink and orange, turquoise and lime green, chocolate brown and pink, black and white.
- Display: Simple frames with or withoutt mats look great, and you can use them later in other rooms. For a different look, hang unframed pieces from clips attached to string or fishing line. Remember to attach any art high and secure to keep out of reach from little hands that like to grab.
DIY Children’s Art
If you can’t find exactly what you’re looking for, you can always make your own artwork. This is the best way to get the colors and designs you’re looking for to create the perfect look for your kid’s rooms. Even if you’re not the crafty type, you’ll be able to pull together one of these looks.
- Use stencils or printouts of letters and numbers as templates for your art. Trace the letters onto scrapbook paper that matches your color scheme, cut them out, and adhere to a coordinating piece of paper. You can mount this on foam board before framing and hanging. Simply use A, B, C and 1, 2, 3 to create a graphic grid when you hang them on the wall.
- Cut out different shapes and sizes from pieces of foam board. You can make as many as you would like of all different sizes. Gather fabric scraps from around the house or buy some at a local craft store. Cut fabric slightly larger than each shape, wrap around the foam board, and staple to the back.
- The easiest option? Let your children do the work. Have your budding artist sign his or her art. Then frame it, hang it, and you’re done.
