Cost Effective Ways to Decorate Toddler's Room

I decorated my son's room with removable wall decals. They are all over the internet, and there are many themes you can find. I looked and looked until I found a great nautical theme at Target (on clearance, no less) - it cost about $15 and it transformed the room. The best thing is, the decals are removable, so no damage done to the walls.

Ikea is always cheap, if you're near one.

Also, any pictures you have of him playing, you can frame or blow up.
I have 3 8x10s of my son playing. None are him looking at the camera. It's his hand on Thomas the Train, and his eye looking through a lampshade, and (just of his legs) pulling on his rain boots.

Looks really cute, and is very cheap to do.

Frame pictures in children's books and consider wall-mounted bookshelves that you can swap out items on as the child grows. Also take a look at the craft stores. You can get inexpensive letters in your son's name and paint them, among other ideas.

If you're crafty at all you can do stuff CHEAP! I bought a naked peg/shelf at 1/2 off at a Hobby Lobby, painted it pink and used scrapbook supplies and wooden butterflies (tons of selection for .59 each at hobby lobby) to put on it. It's so cute! I've painted and put together a ton for her room. I took a basic cork board, painted it pink all around the wooden part, put green fabric over the cork and put butterflies and flowers on the corners.
She has a place now to put her bday cards and special pics up and it looks cute. Framing pictures is always fun, and you'd be amazed at how a curtain and couple of cute shelves can liven up a room. Have fun!

Dear SS-

Donkey years ago when I was decorating a room for my eldest sons to share, I got a cute primary colour wall paper border and painted the walls white. I got some really nice kites, and hung them with tails suspended from the ceiling. Also periodically found cheap kids kites in whomever the 'character' of the day was. Easily converted to the 'girls' room with their selection of character kites...was cute!

Have fun!
michele/cat

I wish I could post a picture of DDs room....she has a fairy room which makes jaws drop. I'm only bragging because it's so unlike me to do something 'cute' :) I found a website which sells scene murals. They run anywhere from $60-150 depending on size. They usually take up a wall to a wall and 1/2.

For her, I put up a mural called "Storybook Hollow" and painted the rest of the room in a chair rail style, Tinkerbell green below and Tinkerbell purple above with jewels for the chair rail. I put up a few stickers of Tinkerbell, found at homedepot, on the mural and in the room. Her bed is just a normal girl's bed and I don't have special bedding, just what was on sale at bed, bath and beyond.

It looks like a Fairytale land and the whole thing was under $200!

For a boy, dinosaurs, space -hang planets from the ceiling, space mural, cars, you name it.

have fun!!

Well, you gotta pick a theme first. For my son, now 8, I just did kind of a learning/science them. He has two huge maps on the wall, one World and one USA. Picked them up at Walmart for less than $5 each. They add alot of color to his room and now he has actually used them for homework projects. I like neutral paint because his toys and stuff add enough color to the room. You can also frame pictures from books or magazines. I've seen some beautiful Space pictures in our Nat Geo magazine that I might frame for his room. I find second hand, good quality wood furniture and then sand and paint it to match. You just need to pick a theme and use your imagination. There's no need to spend alot of money to try to make it look like some non functioning room in a magazine.

I second Ikea if you eventually want to change decor as he gets older.

For my daughters' rooms, paint does play a lot in our decor. As far as affordable things, I use the cheap frames from IKEA in black to display her art work. Hooks and Mirrors from Hobby Lobby also are great with the half off price but not certain if they have a website. My other dd's room has decals from target. They cost about $14 and works well with our pricier quilt. Also check etsy.com for decals they have airplanes and just about anything and can be really affordable. If you can get hold of a cricut you can also cut out vinyl letters and numbers to stick to the wall. My littlest one has a green woodland themed room so I cut ours out of brown vinyl and the letter that is also her initial is in pink just to pop it a little. The whole project cost $20 and took up most of the wall. I lined them in six and six rows. You can also use scrapbook paper and make simple collages depending on your theme and frame them. -Like sail boats, airplanes, trains, cars, bears. I've seen something like a giraffe the whole thing covered the wall but was drawn in parts on white paper and each part framed. The total effect was like a broken puzzle. You can do something simpler like a simple teddy bear.

Pick a theme first then go from there.

i cut out pieces of childrens fabric and framed them in and hung them in my childs room. you can paint things on the walls - murals - those are cheap if you do them yourself. you can do larger framed prints of any of the disney movies.

Someone mentioned painitng below (along with a lot of other great idea through out) so how about painting shapes in primary colors? No real art skill needed :)

Also for wallpaper, if you do not feel up to papering the whole room, take some borders you like cut out the pictures and paste them randomly around the walls, maybe even a differnt theme for each wall...