Classroom Decoration Ideas

October 30, 2021 | Classroom Tips

Your classroom design is important because how your classroom feels will affect how your students feel. The best classrooms are decorated in a way that makes students feel welcomed, comfortable and engaged. In fact, classroom decorations are crucial for inspiring learning, shaping a positive classroom culture, promoting creativity and generating a feeling of ownership among students.

In this ultimate guide to classroom decoration, we’ll discuss classroom decoration ideas for students of all ages. Whether you’re a preschool, elementary school, middle school or high school teacher, you’ll discover decorating ideas that will take your classroom up a notch this year.

Simple Classroom Decoration Ideas for All Ages

Check out the sections below for classroom decoration ideas for preschool, elementary, middle and high school classrooms.

Classroom Decoration Ideas for Preschool

Decorating a preschool classroom is the perfect time to pick a theme that’s full of imagination. A creative preschool theme can be one of the most powerful ways to teach children. A good preschool classroom theme allows you to craft engaging lesson plans full of stories that tie in the theme. Using your theme as a teaching tool will help your students remember your lessons better.

If you’re not sure what to choose as your preschool classroom theme, draw some inspiration from these ideas:

Alphabet: When it comes to a preschool classroom, you can never have too much of the alphabet. Go all out with your alphabet theme by including alphabet toys, games, cards, puzzles and more. You’ll also want to stock up on magnetic letters, considering magnets are a great tool for teaching kids both the alphabet and science.
Animals: Encourage your students to become animal lovers by using an animal-centered classroom theme. Your students will love learning about their favorite animals throughout the year, and as a bonus, you’ll have no problem finding enough animal classroom decorations to choose from.
Countries: Teach your students about the world by basing your classroom’s theme on the different countries. You can fully embrace this theme by learning about a different country each week. Easy classroom details like a countries bulletin board set and a maps poster set will make pulling off this theme a breeze.
Food: Who doesn’t love snack time? Teach your students all about food by following a food theme. Your classroom will look super cute with features like food-focused accent art and cooking stations with miniature fake food.
Nature: Your options for nature-based classroom decor are endless. You can choose decorations that focus on the weather, plants, outer space or any other aspect of nature you want. If you don’t mind redecorating your room a few times per year, you can rotate your theme based on the current season.

Regardless of what theme you pick for your preschool classroom, make sure you incorporate these key components:

Bright colors: Colors can have a profound impact on a child’s mood, so you’ll want to select your classroom’s color scheme carefully. While warm colors like orange or yellow can boost happiness, cool colors like blue or green have a calming effect. In general, bright colors are especially appealing to kids, making them a solid choice for engaging your students.
Door decor: Making your preschool classroom welcoming to students is essential. You’ll want your students to grow up associating school with positive feelings of security and acceptance. Let your students know that your classroom is a safe place by decorating your door with a vertical welcome banner. Your door decor can showcase your classroom’s theme while reassuring students that it will be a great school year.
Kid-friendly furniture: In a preschool classroom, you want early learning furniture that is preschooler-sized. For example, a short storage cabin is perfect for providing your students with a place to put away the toys they can actually reach. Aside from the practicals, you’ll want to include fun furniture pieces like bean bag chairs, seating circles and easels.
Name plates: Kids love seeing their names, and helping your preschoolers to form their identity is especially important at their young ages. You can help your students embrace their individuality and complete your classroom’s look by giving each desk a decorative name plate.

Classroom Decoration Ideas for Elementary School

Decorating your elementary school classroom is a great way to engage your students and get them excited about each day. You can choose decorations that appeal directly to elementary school-aged kids and stimulate learning. Start by selecting a theme for your classroom that will help create a learning environment and educational experiences.

For an elementary school classroom, you have all of the same theme options as a preschool classroom. However, you can go a bit more in-depth with whichever theme you choose. While a preschool classroom theme might introduce students to certain concepts, an elementary classroom theme can dig deeper into its theme and explain more of the details behind it.

Here are some ways you can educate your students through your classroom theme and decorations:

Posters: In an elementary classroom, you can include more posters with words and phrases. Some of your classroom’s posters might even explain a historical event or scientific cycle. Choose posters that will spark students’ curiosity, go along with your theme and make your room look great.
“All About Me” posters: Along with academics, you want your students to learn more about each other. Dedicating a bulletin board or corner of the room to featuring a different student’s “All About Me” poster each week is a great way to build community within your classroom. Encouraging students to talk to their classmates about their backgrounds, likes and dislikes is also valuable for reaffirming their identity and validating their interests.
Classroom jobs board: Once kids reach elementary school, they are ready to take on more responsibility around the classroom — most are even eager to help out! Take advantage of this enthusiasm and teach your students the value of personal accountability by putting up a classroom jobs board. Using brightly colored jobs board will liven up your classroom walls and ensure everyone gets a turn being line leader, door holder or table captain.
Pocket charts: Pocket charts are an excellent decoration for doubling as a teaching tool. Depending on your classroom theme, you can get a pocket chart that tracks the seasons, student birthdays, outstanding behavior and more.

In addition to the classroom decoration ideas above, consider turning one of the corners of your classroom into a “great escape space.” By creating a space students can retreat to whenever they need a moment away from the masses, you can teach students how to monitor their mood and practice self-regulation. In this way, your classroom decor can instill students with mental wellness skills that will stick with them for the rest of their lives.

The escape corner is also a perfect opportunity to expand on your classroom’s theme and learning environment. Students start to crave more independence in elementary school, making a private corner for self-directed individual or small group activities a great teaching tool. Fostering independent learning at this age will help prepare your students for middle school and beyond.

Escape space ideas that could tie into your classroom’s theme include:

Cozy campsite: Go all out with the camping theme by setting up a mini tent, faux campfire circle and camping-centered wall decor.
Secret garden: Embrace the nature theme by creating a secluded garden for your students, complete with plenty of greenery and a comfy reading bench.
Personal art studio: Inspire creativity with a small art studio section full of craft supplies, easels and student-art displays.
Cute cafe: Make your students feel more sophisticated sitting at a cafe to complete their assignments. Use cafe furniture and set up a hot chocolate, tea or coffee bar to complete this cute look.

Classroom Decoration Ideas for Middle School

Decorating a middle school classroom is a bit more of a delicate matter than other classrooms. When decorating a middle school classroom, it’s important to remember that middle schoolers tend to be more sensitive, insecure and self-conscious about appearing cool to their peers. To counteract these feelings, you will want to create a more grown-up space that helps students feel comfortable being themselves.

Achieving this goal involves choosing a more age-appropriate theme than some of the younger student themes. Here are some themes your middle schoolers might enjoy:

Pop culture wall: The best way to relate to middle schoolers is to be up on the current trends. However, trends change rapidly, and you can’t be redecorating your classroom every week. The solution to this problem is selecting a single wall or section of the room that you can quickly and repeatedly tear down and redo to fit the times and meet the needs of your students.
Home sweet home: Instead of choosing a cheesy classroom theme, aim for a more homey vibe. Making your classroom feel like home can help your students relax and feel freer to be themselves. For this theme, focus on incorporating gentle fabrics, delicate lighting and greenery. Soft seating, fluorescent light filters and house plants are your greatest assets for cultivating a cozy atmosphere.
STEM: Middle school is an opportune time to encourage students to explore more of the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) realms. Build interest in STEM by decking out your classroom with STEM-related decorations and activities like robotics. For your more creative-minded students, you can include the Arts to make it STEAM.

No matter what theme you choose for your middle school classroom, make sure your classroom promotes learning and community, not competition. Fostering unity will help your students overcome self-consciousness and feel more accepted by their peers. Try using the following decoration ideas to turn your classroom into a safe space:

Put up posters that promote positivity and a growth mindset. These posters can help set the tone for your classroom and make your expectations for a good attitude clear.
Showcase work from each one of your students that demonstrates personal growth. Consider making a bulletin board that recognizes students’ acts of kindness instead of focusing solely on academic work.
Instead of putting up anything that singles out individual students or compares students, emphasize your class is one team by celebrating group successes.

Classroom Decoration Ideas for High School

Once kids reach high school, the classroom theme becomes less important. For most high school classrooms, your class subject can be the theme. Depending on what you teach, your classroom decor can be all about historical figures, mathematic procedures, classic literature, scientific phenomenons or any other school subject. Overall, try to use decor that makes your subject come to life.

For most high school teachers, bulletin boards are your best means of decoration. Here are some bulletin board decoration ideas that your high schoolers will actually be interested in:

Instagram wall: Stay relevant by turning your bulletin board into an Instagram wall. Ask your students to bring in pictures they’d like featured on the wall, along with a caption explaining why they chose those pictures. Posting their pictures will help your room look more inviting and get your students better acquainted with one another. Place the pictures in pre-cut frames to make your wall even more Instagram-worthy.
Student-created display: High schoolers will appreciate the freedom and independence that comes with creating the classroom bulletin board themselves. Supply your students with art materials and a general topic, then let them get to decorating. As a bonus, a student-created display guarantees that the board is relatable and relevant.
Subject-themed bulletin board: Crafting a bulletin board focused on your subject is a great way to tie the room together. Regardless of what subject you teach, you can find a bulletin board set that pertains to it. You can use a subject-related bulletin board set as your base, then build on it with other decorations and personal touches.

Along with your classroom decorations, desk formation is key for high school classrooms. The way your classroom’s desks are arranged can determine the level of student participation, engagement and interaction. Try to set up your classroom’s desks in a way that sparks productive conversations among students.

Promote collaborative learning with one of the following arrangements:

Circle seating: Setting up your classroom desks in a circular formation instead of traditional rows can help students feel more included in the conversation and comfortable speaking up.
Pods: Consider creating clusters of soft seating for discussion-based lesson days. Organizing students into these smaller pods is perfect for encouraging more dialogue and interaction with the course materials.
Workstations: Depending on what subject you teach, your students might benefit from having workstations. STEM classes, in particular, can use workstations to promote students conducting experiments, building, researching and working together.
Tech stations: Get your high schoolers to unplug and engage with each other by designating a corner of the room for phone storage. Make your tech station decorative and functional by using a pocket chart as a phone home.

Get Your Classroom Decorations From The Classroom Store

Put your new classroom decoration ideas into action by picking up the supplies you need from The Classroom Store. From art materials and classroom resources to furniture pieces and workstations, you can find everything you need to bring your classroom decoration dreams to life at The Classroom Store. Shop by product, grade, brand or what’s new to make finding your classroom decor as simple as possible.

Plan your classroom design and order your classroom decorations from The Classroom Store today!