While a lot of parents spend early fall buying school supplies and school clothes,
some other parents use the time to update their kid’s rooms. And one of the best
ways to decorate your child’s room is with art.

Listening to children and their suggestions on how they’d like to decorate their
rooms can give us some great ideas!

We asked a bunch of our favorite kids what kind of wall art they’d like if they got
to decorate their rooms.

“Funny art”, Grace, age 8

“Anything with my name on it.” Katie, age 5

“Maps of the United States!” Max, age 9

“MY art.” Michael, age 11

“Pictures of my favorite musicians!” –Skylar, age 9

“I like movie posters like The Incredibles, Star Wars, Hulk and King Kong. And Yankee photos and memorabilia.” -Jacob, age 8 ½

“Pictures of my cat!” “Big!” “Over my bed!” - Jessica, age 5

“Photos of Italy and other places I’ve traveled to with my family” Sally, age 13

“Pictures of my favorite actors and singers like the High School Musical stars!” Kira, age 9.5

“Anything that’s purple, my favorite color!” Hannah, age 4

“I would like to have pictures of candy on my walls.” – Rose, age 9

So how do you turn these ideas into great art for your home that you as the parent can live with, too? The idea is to have some fun! Create a theme!

If you want inexpensive posters of rock stars or movie heroes, those are easy to find. Just frame the art in an unexpected way or group them in an interesting arrangement. Lots of small images in clear inexpensive frames in a grid arrangement are eye-catching and clean looking.

Shop at local flea markets for old illustrated children’s books and frame the pages from them. Some of them are amazing. Alphabet art is always wonderful, too. Have the child’s name written out by an artist using creative alphabet letters.

If you want something your kids can grow with, and that has continuing value, start collecting. Cartoon cells of their favorite animated characters, limited edition vintage posters or fine art photographs are always great choices- just make sure the subject matter is something of interest to your kids.

You can create a small art budget for your child and then once a year you can help them find something they like from an artist or company -shopping online makes this quite easy- and get them started learning about the world of art collecting, too.

Size matters

According to a recent blurb in the Economist blog, “the acceptable size
of paintings is increasing, presumably as houses and walls get bigger too.
It used to be that anything more than 3.2 meters high would be hard to sell…
now you can go up to 4 meters before prices peak.”

Someone recently asked me if this applies to fine art photography, too.
And the answer is, yes. Over the past decade, bigger has become
better at many galleries- witness Thomas Struth and other of the German
photographers popular in the art world today.

From a decorating point of view, many decorators feel, like with furniture,
that even in a small space, one big piece of furniture or one big piece of art
makes a better visual statement than a lot of smaller pieces all over the place.

On the other hand, I personally love mixing things up and feel that the image itself
should dictate how it’s printed. Some images shouldn’t be blown up big just for
the sake of being big. There’s something wonderful about a small image in
a big mat with a lot of breathing space. It creates a sense of intimacy that
draws you into the picture more.

In honor of keeping things small, one of our favorite images we love small is Susan's Vase.

As the Photo of the Month, 5% of the proceeds of the photo will go to PeaceTrees Vietnam. This organization helps clear landmines in Vietnam, plants trees and helps promote a safe future for the country's children.