Decorating Walls and Ceilings
🎓 Skills Your Child Will Develop
- 🏆 Pride in Environment — Children who participate in making their environment beautiful develop ownership of and investment in that space — taking better care of it and experiencing the satisfaction of living in a space they helped create.
- 🖐️ Fine Motor Skills — The detailed physical work of decorating — cutting paper precisely, placing items carefully, hanging things level — develops fine motor precision in a context that children find personally meaningful and motivating.
- 🌈 Color & Pattern Recognition — Choosing and combining colors and patterns develops color theory intuition, visual discrimination, and pattern recognition — skills that support art, mathematics (pattern sequences), and detailed visual processing.
- 🤝 Collaborative Decision-Making — Decorating shared spaces as a family requires negotiating aesthetic preferences, compromising, and respecting others' contributions — social-emotional skills that collaborative school and work projects require.
There's more to decorating walls than just paint and wall borders. With a little creativity and some help from Preschool Decorating Ideas, you can use all that wall space to add interest and excitement to your preschooler's bedroom and playroom. Go beyond the paint and wall borders and create a fun place your preschooler will love to play and sleep.
Featured Wall Decorating Ideas
Selecting a Color for Your Preschoolers BedroomSelecting a color for your preschooler's bedroom can be tricky. Should you let your preschooler pick out their own color? What colors work best for preschoolers? Here are some tips for choosing a color for your preschooler's bedroom, as well as a list of effects certain colors have on your preschoolers mood.
Alphabet BorderWhat better way to teach your preschooler her ABC's than with this fun and colorful wall border. Easy and inexpensive to make, this border can be customized to match your preschooler's existing bedroom colors. The possibilites are endless with this clever preschool decorating idea!
Easy Striped Border
You can add a fun and easy border to brighten your preschooler's bedroom. Looking for a way to spruce up exisiting walls? This project is quick to make, and the results look amazing! Using left-over paint to make this border can help keep your budget in balance.
Featured Decorating Product Review
Chalk Board Paint
If you are looking for an easy and inexpensive idea for your preschooler’s bedroom or playroom, why not try painting a surface with chalkboard paint. This versatile paint has become very popular in decorating magazines and books, featured in kitchens, dining rooms, even living rooms. Chalkboard paint can be applied to a variety of surfaces including wood, metal, masonry, drywall, plaster, glass, concrete, and terra cotta. A durable as it is versatile, chalkboard paint holds up to repeated chalk writing and erasing. Recycle old windows, doors, or other flat surfaces by turning them into homemade chalkboards!
Around PreschoolRock.com
Rock Through the Alphabet - Letter "A" Apple Stamping
Preschoolers will love learning about the letter "A" with this fun stamping activity. With only a few minutes of adult preparation, you can create fun letter "A" stamps out of apples. Your preschoolers will enjoy stamping the letter "A" all over their paper.
Setting Up a Preschool Pretend Play Center
A preschool pretend play center does not require a lot of planning. By providing simple toys or objects from around the house you can set the scene for learning. Preschoolers will learn through their play the important skills that they will use later in their life. Following a few guidelines will get you started on a play enriching pretend play center.
Functional Considerations for Children's Window Treatments
Beyond aesthetics, window treatments in a preschooler's room serve important practical functions. Light control is the most critical: preschoolers who nap and sleep better in a darkened room benefit enormously from blackout or room-darkening options, even behind a decorative treatment. Look for cellular shades or blackout roller shades that can be layered with a decorative panel for the best of both worlds.
Safety is equally important. Avoid long cords entirely in any room where a young child spends time — cordless lift systems and motorized options are now widely available at every price point. Tie-back cords should be secured with breakaway safety tassels as a minimum precaution.
Involving Your Preschooler in the Process
One of the most valuable things about decorating a preschooler's room — and one of the most overlooked — is the opportunity to involve your child in the decisions. Even a two-year-old can point to a color swatch they prefer, choose between two fabric options, or decide where their stuffed animals will live. This participation builds ownership, autonomy, and genuine pride in their space.
Children who have contributed to their environment are more likely to respect and care for it. "We chose this together" is a powerful message about a child's value and voice in the family. It also makes the room genuinely theirs in a way that an adult-designed space, however beautiful, never quite can be.
Practical Tips for Preschool Room Design
- Paint smart. Semi-gloss or satin finishes are far more washable than flat paint — an important consideration in a preschooler's room. Test colors in the actual room at different times of day before committing.
- Think in layers. The most flexible rooms use a neutral base (walls, large furniture) with personality added through easily swapped textiles, art, and accessories — elements you can update as your child grows and interests change without repainting.
- Prioritize the floor. Preschoolers live on the floor. A soft, washable area rug defines the play space and adds warmth and color without the commitment of wall color.
- Light at child height. A small lamp at floor or low table level, in addition to overhead lighting, creates cozy pools of light perfect for reading and quiet play.
- Display their art. A simple clipline or magnetic board where your preschooler's artwork is regularly displayed communicates that their creativity has real value.
