Our children grow up so quickly that it is easy to forget that their room needs to grow up with
them as well. When my son graduated from the nursery to his first room I decorated it in lighthouses
and sailboats. I figured that this was a theme that he could live with for many years to come. I was
wrong. At about age six he informed me that he didn’t like lighthouses and sailboats and wanted
something that was cool. His theme of choice: dinosaurs. So when we moved about a year and a half
ago we redid his child room decor with dinosaurs and I moved the sailboats and lighthouses into
my downstairs bathroom.
I’m sure once he reaches up with his teen years he will no longer be happy with dinosaurs and will
want something new again for decorating child room. This transition is a natural process. After
all there aren’t very many teenage boys who would want to bring their friends home to a room
decorated with dinosaurs. And I can’t imagine a teenage girl inviting her girlfriends to sleep
over in a pink princess room. No matter how much she loved it when she was little.
The key to transitioning a room is to keep it simple. When I first decorated my son’s
room I made him a denim quilt. I figured that the quilt could transition through any
number of stages. I also decorated one wall with a large picture frame with multiple pictures
of him growing up. These two items are still in his room. I also bought a shelf that first
housed a lighthouse and sailboat and now features some dinosaurs. The idea is to keep your
basic components the same.
When we changed his child room decor over to dinosaurs I made some curtains and a bed skirt
out of dinosaur material. You could also easily buy these. I found some 8x10 dinosaur prints
on E-bay and then bought some cheap wood frames at Wal-Mart. We created a dinosaur collage
on one wall with these prints.
Another cheap way to give a child room decor a makeover is with a new coat of paint. We
painted the walls in my son’s room blue. You can also add a wall border. I bought the vinyl
removable kind so that it will be easy to remove when my son wants to change the theme or
we move. Adding a lamp or a bulletin board is also a great way to change the room and still
keep the costs down.
So far my girls haven’t complained about their room decor. It is painted lilac and
they have matching yellow and lilac flowered bedspreads. But we’ll see what happens when
they start school. The important thing is that your child’s room reflects their age as well
as whom they are.
