Kids Wall Art

Kids Wall Art: Read This First

The honest caveat is that children's taste moves faster than your walls do. A three-year-old's favourite animal is not a five-year-old's, and art bought to match one specific obsession tends to come down within two years. That is fine if you go in knowing it. It is less fine if you commit a whole room to a single theme and then find yourself repainting to be rid of it.

Safer ground is the middle layer: subjects a child likes now and an older child will not be embarrassed by — balloons, boats, a hot air balloon over hills, a friendly line-drawn animal, a simple map. These survive the taste shifts. Save the very specific interests for things that are cheap to change, and let the walls carry the calmer version.

Height is the practical detail most people get wrong. Adults hang at adult eye level out of habit, which puts the picture above the child's sightline entirely. Drop it lower than feels right — think about where a small person's eyes actually are when they are sitting on the floor — and the room starts working for its occupant instead of for visitors.

Colour needs discipline in small rooms. Nursery art often arrives in bright primaries, and three or four loud prints in a space already full of toys, books and plastic will make it feel restless at bedtime. Pick one image to be the bright one and keep the others soft. A room can hold a lot of colour, but not a lot of competing colour.

If you are buying for a shared bedroom, run this test: ask each child to point at the one they would keep. You will usually get two different answers, which is your cue to hang one clearly on each side of the room rather than a single compromise piece in the middle that neither of them chose.