19 Wall Decor Ideas for Every Room

More (Easy & Affordable) Tips for Decorating Your Walls

It’s one thing to look at picture of ideas for wall decor…but it’s an entirely different thing to actually incorporate them into your home. Here are some simple strategies to make wall decorating easy and affordable.

• Wall decor tip: Mix materials. Have fun with metals and woods.
• Wall decor tip: Create a gallery – of everything but art. A wall devoted to hanging plants, tapestries, sconces, mirrors and/or clocks offers an eclectic look – without relying on traditional “art.”
• Wall decor tip: Paint color blocks. A rising trend, color blocking through paint involves painting a portion of a wall in a ‘popping’ color (turquoise is a common choice). The keyword here? Portion. A square or “block” of turquoise in the center of a beige or white wall = mod decor.
• Wall decor tip: Incorporate whiteboards or chalkboards. If you have kids, this is an especially cool idea for playrooms. (For bonus points, turn the entire wall into a drawable canvas!) 
• Wall decor tip: Frame your children’s art. Living with a future artist? You can tape up your child’s masterpieces on the fridge – or, you can frame them in a gallery devoted to your little Picasso!

Through the Years: A Look Back At How We Chose to Decorate Our Walls

Ah, walls. They’re the first thing you see when you wake up and the last thing you see before falling asleep. For millennia, they’ve provided humans shelter, privacy…and the perfect ‘canvas’ for art expression. Let’s take a look back at the past few decades of walls (and their decor), as remembered in the collective American consciousness:

Birth - elementary school age:

• Nursery walls with pastel wallpaper or paint dominated our new eyesights. Baby animals, framed photographs of family members, and perhaps even inked versions of our own handprints and footprints were just some of the wall motifs we were introduced to as children.

Middle school years:

• With blooming friendships starting to form and not yet hurdled down by major responsibilities, our bedroom walls were filled with splashes of color and collages of our BFFs – and felt as bright and big as our dreams.

High school years:

• The discovery of pop culture paved our choice of fashion, the movies we watched, and the music we listened to – all of which we pinned, in poster form, to our bedroom walls.

College years:

• While band and movie posters were still a dominant motif in college, living for the first time away from home emboldened our style choices. Our definition of ‘wall decor’ broadened. Thumbtacks were swapped for frames, and we allowed the additions of wall “accessories” like string lights and decals.

First apartment years (and beyond):

• ‘Adulting’ came upon us hard – and one need look no further than our walls to prove it. From gallery paintings to full size mirrors to floating shelves, our decor proved that somewhere along the way, we ‘grew up’ – elegantly, and in style.