Most children have strong tastes. They know exactly what they want in the way of clothes and food so it is not surprising they know how they want their rooms to look.
A few guidelines
- If possible don’t paint with your child, but if you must, try and completely clear the room first. I mean completely, my own son mixed paint on his new bedroom carpet in a moment of decorating enthusiasm and then preceded to leave hand -prints on the walls!
- If you can’t roll up carpets make sure that the dust-sheet you put down is stuck down at the edges of the room with masking or brown sticky tape. Plastic dust sheets are best for preventing globs of paint seeping through to the floor or carpet beneath.
- Remove all furniture and soft furnishings, toys and clutter. The first job when painting is to clean or strip the walls. Children should not be around hot steamers, but will usually love to put their hands in a bucket of soapy water and help to clean the walls.
- We are not all colour geniuses, but a little judicious compromise will not come amiss when your child wants every surface in their room to be duck-beak yellow. Do you want them hallucinating and not going to sleep? Suggest one wall of their favorite colour or accessorise with curtains, cushions or lampshade in the chosen hue.
- A child will usually apply paint more evenly using a smallish roller than with a paint-brush. A radiator roller will do the job. Make sure you help or guide when putting the paint on the roller, or you will probably get too much paint on it.
- Although I prefer the look of matte paint in bedrooms it is more practical to use a vinyl silk paint in a child’s room, as it is easy to wipe down and keep clean.
When you have finished painting the walls
If your furniture is looking a bit grim, paint it and then decoupage images onto the furniture. Use PVA glue to stick them in place and make a protective coat of varnish by mixing the PVA 50/50 with water. It will look milky while you paint it on but will be clear when it dries.
Paper cutting is fun
Make bunting by cutting triangles of coloured paper and stick them round the top of the walls near the ceiling, using wall paper paste, just like real bunting. Cut balloon shapes from coloured card or paper and stick them on the wall in groups of twos and threes and draw wavy strings coming from them using felt tips.
Home made borders
Divide a roll of lining paper into three width-ways and then use the rolls as borders or freizes, to go round the top of the room or to make an optical illusion round the room.
Decorate the border with your child’s hands and feet prints. Just paint water colours or poster colours on the hands or feet and then place them on the border paper. You could even do dog and cat prints, fake or real! The best place to do this kind of thing is outside. You will need a bowl of warm water and a towel for foot and hand washing and drying, and some stones or weights to stop the paper curling up whilst you are working.
Blackboard paint is another way of making a room child friendly . I suggest using it on the back of a door or paint a port hole and fill in with blackboard paint. A whole wall of black might be oppressive.
Children love camps, and a bunk bed with plain white blinds attached to the bottom of the top bunk make a good hiding place. Decorate the plain blinds with fabric paints and pens.
Juliet Bawden - Juliet Bawden is a craft & design writer and broadcaster. She has had over 60 books published. She crafts, cooks -gardens and recycles
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