Paint Ideas for a Bungalow Ceiling for Kids

Big Top Circus Tent

• Paint the ceiling in a small bedroom, a nursery or toddler’s room in wide colorful stripes. A cheerful combination is a banana yellow and white striped ceiling over three white walls and an accent wall of royal blue or a toned-down wall in medium gray. With a black and white diamond patterned linoleum tile or painted wood floor, junior is ready for the center ring. Keep lots of white in the room to highlight the inventive stripes and offset the strong colors. Bedding that picks up the yellow on the ceiling in a contemporary pattern will help to pull things together.

Birds’ Nest Bedroom

• When the ceiling is gabled in an attic bedroom, or just uneven where old construction was cobbled together, take to the skies and camouflage it. Color wash the ceiling a clear cerulean with some puffy clouds, or stick to a simple color palette and go with white and the room’s accent color. If the accent color is orange, paint the ceiling apricot with clouds, and use a stencil or a stamp to cover it with a flock of burnt sienna or paprika swallows. For a blue ceiling, paint gray or indigo birds. Roman shades on the windows and a dust ruffle on a bed or crib could pick up the colors of the ceiling or complement a blue sky ceiling. Hang small wooden birdhouses on a wall or arrange antique birdhouses in view but out of reach on a shelf just below the ceiling. The soaring birds distract the eye from the less-than-perfect ceiling.

Scribble Ceiling

• A teen’s or tween’s bungalow bedroom becomes a work of art when the ceiling and a slice of upper wall are covered in blackboard paint. Don’t be afraid of a dark cave as today’s blackboard paint comes in a number of shades to match or complement the room’s decor. Custom mixing your own color is fairly simple; just keep it dark enough to show the chalk. You'll want to paint the entire ceiling with at least two coats, and extend the paint a foot or two down the wall all around to lower a ceiling that is too high. Use a soft blue, minty green or creamy yellow paint on the walls below, and supply the room’s inhabitant with plenty of chalk.

Style Sandwich

• Sandwich a funky bungalow bedroom in between a painted ceiling and a painted floor to update an old space inexpensively. The ceiling reflects plenty of light when it is glazed in a clear bright color; rose pink, cantaloupe, blue lavender or turquoise green will draw eyes upward. Paint the floor in wide stripes or big diamonds of solid color and white; black and white is contemporary and classic, but an off-shade of the ceiling color and white would be interesting. Decorative white molding installed along the edge of the ceiling becomes a frame for the vivid glaze. Below the molding, walls won't compete with the ceiling and floor if they are painted white or colorwashed in a very soft pastel. The bedroom will work with modern, shabby chic or eclectic furniture and the decor style can be changed without repainting.