Cheap Kids' Room Makeovers
How to Redecorate Your Child’s Bedroom on a Budget
Treat your children to a new bedroom renovation without spending a lot of money.
Your child’s room is more than just a place where he lays his head at night. It’s a place to call his own, where kids’ colors and styles rule.
You don’t need a professional decorator to spruce up your kids’ rooms. With some specialty paints and simple projects, you can turn your kids’ bedrooms into the most awesome rooms in your house.
1. Use organizers
If your child has a room full of what he calls “treasures” and what you call “junk” make it part of the kids’ room décor. Some storage solutions jazz up the room and provide a way to take care of storing kids' toys and other items.
Buy clear plastic shoe bags and hang them on big, brightly colored hooks on the wall. Your child can fill the pockets with his “stuff.”
Hang a clothesline across a large wall. Use large, colorful clothespins and hang photographs and your child’s artwork on it.
Pick up some inexpensive plastic bins in bright colors and use them to hold shoes, books, school supplies, CDs, and other items in your child’s room.
2. Think color!
Crayola makes some fun shades of paint for kids’ rooms. Paint isn’t just for walls. Look around your child’s room. What could use a splash of color? Ceiling fan blades, dresser tops, shelves, bed headboards or chairs can all be painted in accent colors.
3. Decorate for the dark
Use glow-in-the-dark paint to add stars and planets, or any other cool design to your child’s ceiling. In the light of day, it’s nearly invisible. When the lights go out, he’ll have a softly glowing mural to lull him to sleep.
4. Get creative with furniture
Decorate an old chair or stool for an artistic piece of furniture in your child’s room. Lightly glue pictures, a map, or a montage of something that interests your child, onto the seat of the chair or stool. Decoupage over the top with several coats of decoupage medium, such as Mod Podge. Paint the legs of the chair or stool with brightly colored paint.
5. Turn something into a magnet board, chalkboard or dry erase board
Turn your child’s bed headboard or the side of a dresser or shelf into a center for creativity. Paint any flat, relatively large section of a piece of furniture with magnetic paint. You can even attach a holder for magnets. Magnetic poetry kits are fun, and teacher supply stores have artistic and educational magnets of all sorts. You can turn almost anything into a magnet with magnetic backing material, found in craft stores.
You can do the same thing with chalkboard paint or dry erase paint.
6. Create a kids’ reading corner
Buy an inexpensive beanbag chair and a few throw pillows. (If you have a sewing machine, make your own pillows using some of the new, novelty print fabrics available at fabric shops.) Paint a crate and turn it on its side to hold books.
If there is a window nearby, attach a window box on the inside, just below the window. Fill it with paperbacks, pencils, paper, a journal, bookmarks and a mini reading light.
7. Do windows
Think beyond curtains with a window in your child’s room. Attach scarves, beads, windsocks, or anything fancy or flighty to a curtain rod in lieu of a traditional curtain or valance.
Have a brand new room to decorate? Find tips for moving with kids in How to Move with Children: 10 Tips for Relocating with Kids.
Decorating a teen's room? See Teen Bedroom Decorating Ideas.
