Parents love to display their children's artwork, but the art often looks cluttered and messy.
Your home should look well decorated and your kids' art deserves to be treated with respect and honor.
Here are a few interior designer tips, tricks, and ideas for how to display your kids' art in a more sophisticated and organized way.
photo courtesy of pvanb flickr.com/photos/pvanb/6932744713/Not on the Fridge
Do NOT hang artwork on your refrigerator.
Your fridge should have nothing on it in order to make your kitchen less cluttered.
If you must hang things on the fridge, hang them on the least visible side, but absolutely not the front.
Frame It
You can purchase a collection of picture frames that look good in your home for your children's art.
For a more professional look, get frames with white mattes.
For even more sophistication, put artwork in the frames that coordinates with the decor of the room.
You can rotate the artwork in and out to display different pieces at different times.
Having children's art framed on the wall gives them a sense of accomplishment and shows them that their artwork is valued.
Do not keep purchasing more and more frames to add to your home. Have a certain number of frames and allow your children to choose their favorite pieces of art to hang in each frame.
Contemporary Art
You can have your children paint contemporary artwork to hang on the walls of their room, their bathroom, their playroom, or the hallway near their rooms.
Purchase several identical canvases from an art supply store and 3 to 5 colors that coordinate with the color scheme of your room.
Do not select primary colors (red, yellow, blue), else the artwork may look too basic. Unique colors like turquoise, copper, teal, mauve, and emerald green work best for a more custom and sophisticated look.
Have your kids paint their own contemporary masterpieces.
Make sure they cover all of the white canvas, including the sides, so that no white shows through.
Only paint one color at a time and let the canvases dry before changing colors so all the colors do not blend together and make a big brown muddy mess.
Hang all the canvases together as a collection.
Use at least 2 large sized (36" x 36" or larger) or 3 medium sized (18" x 18") canvases.
Smaller canvases are not suggested because they may make your room look cluttered.
Curtain Rod Art Hanging
For your kids' rooms or your gameroom, consider getting a decorative wall mounted curtain rod per child and some clip curtain rings to hang artwork.
You can hang the curtain rod at kid level so that they can rotate their favorite pieces in and out, or you can hang it up higher so younger siblings can not reach.
Bulletin Board
You can put the artwork on a large bulletin board, but make sure the artwork does not overlap the frame or hang outside the bulletin board else it will look messy.
Art Book
Make a scrapbook or photo book with your children's artwork and put the book on display.
Make sure the artwork is contained inside the scrapbook and not hanging outside the dimensions of the cover.
You can take photos of the artwork and have a company make a photo book of the art. Many companies that make photo books have 50% off sales at different times of the year.
Photo Coasters
Purchase nice glass photo coasters (not the cheap plastic ones) #ad and fill the coasters with your kids' artwork or a photo of the artwork.
Photo coaster make great gifts for grandparents.
Archive
You do NOT need to display every scrap of paper that your children make for you or bring home from school.
Consider archiving your children's artwork and other school papers by getting one box per child per year.
All saved artwork must fit in that box, else some should be discarded so that only the best will fit.
You can let the children select their favorites to save.
For larger pieces or 3 dimensional pieces of art, take a photo of your child holding that piece of art and put the photo in the box.
Consider purchasing several of the same box at the same time so they look nice and stack well on a shelf. Having multiple different sizes and styles of boxes tends to look messy.
Less is More
Remember that even though you may want to display every piece of artwork that your children create, the more artwork that is displayed means that less importance is given to each individual piece.
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