How to Decorate a Travel-Themed Bedroom for Kids

Want to spark your child’s curiosity about the world while traveling AND at home? Trimming a kid’s space with travel touches will inspire a love of exploration and teach global understanding from a young age. You don’t need a lot of money to create an impressive room your children will love, either. Follow these five easy tips on how to decorate a kid’s travel-themed bedroom!

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Hang Wall Maps and Murals

A map-bedecked feature wall not only looks fabulous but also will help your child learn geography. Purchase adorable map wall stickers featuring animals from around the world or a kids world dry erase map with fun graphics.

Alternatively, buy a more traditional map with foam backing, to which your child can add pins for dream destinations or places visited. If you live far away from loved ones like we do, you might want to pin photos of family and friends to mark where they reside. For a simple and inexpensive option, you could also frame a standard world map or even map wrapping paper.

Assemble a Travel Collection

Rather than amassing junky souvenirs during your family vacations that will be tossed aside and forgotten once you return home, encourage your kids to search for a special collectible in every destination.

My daughter collects snow globes to display in her room. In my tween son’s room, we have displayed his collection of Lego architecture and paper model sets that he has built of famous buildings around the world. Other collection suggestions include unique boxes, dolls, figurines, or small flags.

Our family also has a collection of globes spanning the past 50 years. My kids love looking at how countries have changed their boundaries and names. We adults may remember the U.S.S.R., which stretched across a significant part of the world — but for our kids, there’s only ever been Russia. Search flea markets and Ebay for globes from the past or buy a modern version online.

Likewise, it’s fun to collect postcards from your journeys for an inexpensive way to remember your family’s travels. Either framed individually or hung as part of a gallery wall, they will look terrific in a kid’s travel-themed bedroom.

Buy Travel-Themed Storage

Get creative when choosing storage for a travel-themed bedroom for kids. You could decoupage a bookshelf with old maps. Or, look for vintage suitcases and trunks at flea markets, garage sales, or Ebay for a fun way to stash your child’s playthings.

For an easy solution, check out this wooden steamer chest to hold toys and this darling set of old fashioned suitcases to house dress-up clothes or action figures. You could also store dolls, stuffed animals, and other toys in woven ethnic baskets, like this hand-woven African basket.

Choose Travel Inspired Textiles, Fixtures and Touches

Let your child’s imagination soar with a hot air balloon overhead light or choose an airplane-shaped shelf to store toys and books. For a younger child, paint the ceiling with clouds, or use stick-on cloud decals.

All children seem to adore choo-choos, so you might want to add some train travel whimsy to the mix with a train-themed quilt. Select a solid-colored comforter and jazz things up with a train throw pillow or two for a subtler choice.

For beach lovers, take the sea with seaside design touches. Nautical bedding or a beach-inspired comforter make classic options for a travel-themed kid’s bedroom.

Create a Travel Gallery Wall

Whether using postcards, art depicting a favorite destination, or your own travel photos — a gallery wall looks best when it’s cohesive. When creating a gallery wall from eclectic pieces of art, either use the same color picture frame for each item or choose different types of frames with art centering on a particular theme.

For an older child, pick up a set of inexpensive wall clocks and set them to different time zones with a city named above each clock. The best thing about a gallery wall is that you can keep adding to the collection until you run out of wall space.

When you use these decorating tips to create a travel-themed bedroom for kids, you’re sure to open your child’s eyes to the wonders of the world and encourage a life of wanderlust.

Learn More

Fill your children’s bookshelves with travel books for kids.

Encourage global understanding with Rosetta Stone for kids.

These travel games are great for playing on the go or at home.

Family movie night is even more fun with this list of travel-themed movies for kids.

Save these Travel Themed Decorating Ideas

Thinking about decorating your child’s room with a travel theme? Be sure to save these travel-themed decorating ideas by saving the image above to Pinterest!

Do you have any other ideas on how to decorate a kid’s travel-themed bedroom? Let us know in the comments below!

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