Fashion Designer’s Wallpaper Technique for Displaying Kids’ Art

When you have kids, it can feel challenging to merge their preferred decor with your own style. While there are plenty of design ideas you can get from from children’s spaces, some of their stuff you’d probably rather stash away in a stylish basket or bin. Kids’ drawings and art projects are high on the list of things some parents just don’t know where to put. Luckily, a fashion designer may have come up with the perfect solution.

Lydia lives in a 450-square-foot studio in San Francisco that she’s been renting for about a year. As an apparel designer, it was important to Lydia to create a space where she felt inspired and could create her best work. “I wanted to create a creative and thriving space that was also a living space, workspace, hangout space, and art space in one,” she said in her house tour.

With this apartment, Lydia really hit the storage jackpot because it has a walk-in closet where she was able to fit her industrial sewing machine. Lydia also updated her big maple work table with new legs so that it doubles as a workstation and a dining space. She didn’t reserve all her creativity for her workspace, though. In fact, Lydia might have struck gold on her bedroom walls, too. She creatively displayed her drawings and fashion sketches in a way that would work perfectly for kids’ paper art projects as well.

Lydia taped her drawings to the wall, with each piece of paper so close that they’re practically overlapping. This creates a bespoke, floor-to-ceiling wallpaper look that’s guaranteed to be cheaper than traditional wallpaper. “Texture is so important to me, and I’ve blended that into my decor,” Lydia said.

Whether you have an empty wall you can’t figure out how to decorate or a stack of your kids’ art projects piling up, this could really work. You could give your refrigerator a break and hang all of your child’s art in their room for them to see and be inspired by every day. Or you could even create a small focus wall like Lydia, but in your living room or entryway for everyone to see. Either way, it’s renter-friendly, super affordable (basically free!), and would make your kid feel really special in the process.