How to Decorate a Kid's Room With High Ceilings

Choose a theme for the room. Think about what sort of things your child likes, such as a favorite cartoon character or a hobby, and create a theme around that. Pirates, space, knights and dragons, racing cars and army camouflage are a few theme ideas for a boy's room. Princess, fairytale castle, flowers and bows, ballerinas and butterflies are all common themes for a girl. The theme doesn't have to be really intricate; it could be as simple as a pink or blue theme.

Paint the ceiling. The most commonly used color for ceilings is white, but with high ceilings, using a darker color creates the effect of lowering it. For a ceiling that suits any decor, paint it a deep blue color and use a paint brush to splatter silver paint to create a night sky. Use light blue and white to create a cloud paint effect, or use a technique such as painting stripes. Alternatively, match the ceiling to the room's theme. Paint planets onto a very deep blue for a space-themed room, or butterflies onto a light blue background for a butterfly-themed room.

Add a dado rail to the wall at chair-rail height. This is a way to break up the height of the walls in a room with a high ceiling. It also allows you to break up the decor on the walls. For example, use brightly-painted wood paneling on the bottom part of the walls for a surface that is hard-wearing and easy to clean. The top part of the wall is then ready for other decor. For example, in a fairytale castle-themed room, paint the wood paneling green to represent lush meadows. Add fairytale castle murals to the top part of the walls, and add a cloud effect to the ceiling.

Create murals on the walls. These can either be done freehand if you're artistic, or you can purchase stencils or mural stickers. Pick out features in the mural with glow-in-the-dark paint to bring the room to life after dark.

Paint the furniture to match the decor of the room. In a racing car room, use the colors of a favorite team. In a knight and dragon-themed room, paint dragon scales onto the furniture. Use white to give a clean, crisp look to the room and stencil on small embellishments such as bows, flowers or stars.

Complete the decor with accessories. Creating papier mache planets to hang in a space-themed room, adding a toy parrot on a perch to a pirate-themed room, making a princess bed canopy in a princess-themed room and hanging decorative butterflies around the headboard in a butterfly-themed room are just a few examples. Many of these accessories can be suspended from the ceiling, taking advantage of the height of the room.