Simple wall painting ideas for kids' bedroom - Painitng 101 - tips & tricks for paining the wall for beginners

Planning for a room makeover? You have come to the right place. In this post, I have shared tips and my first experience of painting a room and things you need to prepare before painting the room. We also  did a butterfly theme for my niece room and football theme for my nephew room. Let's see how we did. 

Materials Used:

Vaughan 22 piece painting set

6' X  9' drop canvas cloth - we used two

4' X 15' drop canvas - one of these

10 piece Painter Plastic drop cloths

6 Rolls of painter's tape - We used almost 4 rolls for 2 rooms 

3M High strength small hole repair 16 oz

Plastic knife set - Disposable Putty knife

Handy Paint cup to transfer paint 

Sanding sponge

 
Preparing the room for painting

Preparing the room for painting is very important just as the actual painting of the room. This takes a lot of time, sometimes even more time compared to the painting process but in the end, you will thank yourself for doing this. Because, you can avoid a lot of mess, paint splatters and back and forth fixing, etc if you prepare the room perfectly. Let us see the step involved in preparing the room: 

1) Covering the floors with canvas cloth & plastic sheets. To cover the baseboards, you can use  Pre-taped masking film to get a clean line after painting and also to avoid mess. And the same can be used on the floor while painting the baseboards. 

We had planned to remove all the old heating elements and wood baseboards, as new heating systems were planned to install, so we didn't cover the baseboards for this project(New baseboards and the bottom part of the wall will be painted once the contractor finishes his work). I used painter's tape and the plastic sheet while doing the baseboards inside the closet. 

2) Removing the doors, closet shelves, closet doors, things on the wall if any, switch plates, etc. If you want to put back something in the same order, make sure to take a photo of all the wiring before removing it. 

3) Covering all the holes on the wall using the spackling compound. Allow it to dry for the time specified on the package. Then use a sanding sponge to smooth the spackling compound. 

We were too enthusiastic and jumped right into painting and only then realized that we omitted that step. So learn from our mistakes. You will think that you might not see the small holes and may feel like this is an extra step but we noticed a lot of small holes while painting. So, I made sure to fill all the holes in the next room we planned to paint using a 3M High strength small hole repair spackling compound, allowed it to dry. 
Then I used a sanding sponge to lightly sanded the spackled area to a smooth surface. Trust me! you will feel so much better. This spackling compound dries within 20 to 30 minutes, so we can quickly move to the next step. 

4) Using Painter's tape to cover the baseboards, window trims, closets trims, door trims, switch plates area, etc

Paint color suggestions :

For girl's room - Butterfly theme room: Coral Perfection

For boy's room - Football theme room: Fountain Mist

Brown color used for Tree trunk(Butterfly tree) and Football: Potter's Rock

All these paints were purchased in Lowe's so it is either Sherwin Williams or Valspar brand. We chose an Eggshell finish for the walls and Ultra-white color semi-gloss finish for the trims and doors.

After selecting all these finishes, the paint associate showed us a flyer to chose and asked which type of paint we want, this was very confusing but we went with a $36 per gallon one which had a stain-resistant thing on it. I should have taken a picture of it, but missed it. Maybe next time. So for each finish you add, the price goes up. Since this was for the kids' room, I felt we wanted at least the stain-resistant quality, so I chose that. In some color, he said he doesn't have that finish, so we had to choose the next quality which is $38 or $42 per gallon, I think this had an extra thing like scratch-resistant or something. 

Tips regarding Painting from my experience

• Always get a quart of paint extra than you think you need if you want to avoid taking multiple trips to the store. Though the can said one-coat coverage, it took two to three coats for complete coverage. One other thing to consider here, since it is a big project and all of us were first-timers, the way the professional painters do and how we do is totally different, so you need to consider that in mind while purchasing the quantity of paint. 
• Don’t worry about the paint getting wasted, if there is an extra unopened can, the store will gladly accept the returns, at least in Lowes that we went, they did accept. Check about the store policy, while purchasing. What we came to know is, after coming home for some reason if you don’t like the shade you purchased and if you have used only a small bit for testing, take the can to the store and they will exchange it for a different shade or refund you the money if you don’t want it. This was totally news to me, I for some reason thought we can’t return the paints once we purchased them
• Then, another thing that I learned is, if you want to match to the same color of wall paint you already have at the home, scrape a little bit of paint using a utility knife and take that piece to the store to color match. They will match the color and make your custom paint. You can go back for corrections if it doesn’t match after you test it. For example, if it is darker they might add some white and mix the paint and give it to you. The custom paint cannot be returned or exchanged. They only make corrections to match the color.The whole paint mixing thing was mesmerizing to watch. 

• To fasten things up we tried a paint sprayer while starting to paint my nephew's room, but the paint sprayer did not work very well. The sprayer sprayed unevenly and it was quite tiring process to mix If you are choosing to do a lot of paint projects go for name-brand paint sprayers as the below ones:

1. Home Right paint sprayer

                          2. Wagner Spraytech 

                          3. Graco sprayers

 

Let’s paint !!

We used paintbrushes and rollers to paint the walls. 
Since it's our first time, we were extremely careful and switch the power in the room while we were working just to be on the safer side that’s why you will see shadows while I am working at night. 

We used an angled brush that came in the painting kit for painitng the top of the wall, corners and the bottom, near the door trims, closet trims and window trims as rollers can't reach these areas. We transferred the paint from the can to the Handy pail and the magnet in the cup was very useful to hold the brush in place. Also, this helped when two or three persons wanted to work with same color paint to complete the painting. 

Painting with rollers needed some arm strength and it was a little tiring compared to painting with brushes so everyone at home shared this process and took turns to do. 

After each coating of paint, we gave around 5 to 6 hours of drying time. It took 2 to three coats of paint, to completely cover the white walls. It took around 5 to 6 days in total to completely finish a room, from the prep work to painting the trim which included doors, trims and putting back the switch plates, doing decals, etc. 

Adding Decals and Designs 

Now let’s talk about the interesting part of the makeover, the butterfly tree. My niece wanted butterflies and no pink or purple in her room. This was her design requirement. So, after looking into many butterflies designs that I sent her she chose a name sign and a butterfly tree. Check out that beautiful 2 in 1 stained wood sign here. 
I was in a dilemma about choosing colors for butterflies. I wasn’t very keen about butterflies looking realistic in this aspect as I felt the design will have too many details and had a feeling that it will not look good. But I couldn’t decide if I should stick to just one shade of butterflies or make it colorful. 
As everyone at home, voted for the colorful option I went ahead and made a bunch of colorful butterflies in different actions using my silhouette cutting machine to fill the tree. I used a removable vinyl just in case if my niece wants to change something in coming years it should be easy for them to remove the decals from the walls.  

Planning to cut these butterfly decals? I used Oracl 631 Matte vinyl. Grab these sheets, 

To draw the tree trunk, I used a strip of painter’s tape as a guide and used a pencil to draw an outline of the tree trunk and branches, then used a small size paint brush to draw the trunk and branches using brown wall paint in the same eggshell finish from Sherwin Williams. 

Once the paint is dry, I stuck the butterfly decals all around the tree trunk and stuck some as if it is flying from the tree to the name sign with flowers to suck the honey from the flowers. I ended the butterflies decals  there. We all loved how the butterfly tree together with the sign turned out. 

Don't have cutting machine? No worries, draw your own trunk and decorate it with butterfly wall stickers below:

While working on the butterfly decal, parallelly we removed all the plastic sheets that we covered the windows and stick the painter's tape on the edges of the trims and inside of the windows to paint the trim. After two to three coatings of white paint in semi-gloss finish. we remove the painter's tape for the room to be finally done. If you have baseboards, this is when you will do the baseboards too. 

Football Theme room 

Next for her nephew room, our initial idea was to make the room a football field and draw a football in the middle, due to the time constraint, we decided to switch to do a single color paint  and drew a football where his bed will be. 

To draw the football, I made a cross using painter’s tape and used a pencil to draw an outline of the football. I wish I made the template in kraft paper or something like that and use it to trace it on the wall. But I managed with what we had on hand.  I used the same brown paint that I used for the tree trunk in my niece's room to fill the football shape. We also got some white custom paint to cover some areas around the house and I used that paint for the two white stripes on the football. For the stitch and the name, I cut my own decals. As he is from MA he wanted his name in New England patriots team color and font and so I made it like that to complete his room decor. 

We had planned to include some more ball decals for his room, as they were no time, My cousin decided to do all the other things whenever she gets time. These Ball decal looks so cool. If you are planning to do a Ball themed room, you might like this one:

Cleaning the brushes and Rollers:

Since these paints are latex, cleaning the paint brushes were easy. I used just some hand soap and water and it did cleaned the brushes very well. 

If you are finding it difficult, you can soak them in a small amount of paint thinner and wash them. 

I wrapped the rollers in a cling wrap to use it for the next day and when the painting is over we discarded since no one had energy to clean it. But the rollers can be cleaned too. Check here for the detailed explanation. 

Hope you liked these room makeovers and got to learn something from this post. Do share your thoughts with us in the comments below. As always I would love to read your comments.