If you’ve been following me for any bit of time you probably have realized that I prefer to wear and decorate with neutrals. However, for my son’s room in our Indiana home, I wanted to create a colorful and educational toddler room to help teach and reinforce his knowledge of colors, shapes, animals, and letters during this developmental stage.
I love a good gallery wall and got the idea for this multi-colored animal alphabet while browsing Etsy’s Black Owned art section. I saw these really cool alphabet animal prints by Emma Make Studio and immediately started brainstorming about how to arrange them to create a feature wall! This way we can point to different prints and practice the alphabet, animals, and colors all in one!
I was on a time crunch and budget to finish this room and the rest of the decor primarily came from a last-minute order of whatever was in stock at my two nearest Target stories. I actually didn’t finish the decor until 5 am the morning that my son arrived AND I had to drive two hours to pick him and my husband up from the airport — the struggle! Here’s some evidence of me trying to piece things together in the middle of the night.
The room isn’t completely done but it’s good enough for now. I’ll probably add doors to the toy storage unit and knobs to the dresser to make them less IKEA, but those are super tiny weekend projects I can do at any point. Aside from the gallery wall, some of the wall art is also temporary (like the macrame wall hanging above the crib), but will/can easily be repurposed elsewhere around the house.
If you want to read about my process for putting a room together, check out this post. Otherwise, keep scrolling to see more pictures and find the full source list below!
Colorful and Educational Toddler Room Decor Sources
Wall Paint: Sherwin Williams Greek Villa
Crib: Wayfair
Dresser: IKEA
Toy Shelf: IKEA (+ these legs)
Kids Chair: Crate & Barrel
Animal Alphabet Prints*: Emma Make Studio via Etsy (all printed at CVS for just $15!)
Small Frames: Walmart
Large Frame: Walmart
Wall shelf: IKEA
Curtains: Target
Lamp: Target
“You Matter” Wall Art*: Target
Space Wall Art: Target
Macrame Wall Hanging: Target
Chalkboard: Target
Cribsheet: West Elm
*Denotes a Black-owned or Black-designed product.
Dr. Kola, I love the theme and dual functionality of TKB’s room! I have a son, too and want his room to be engaging and educational! He’s really into vehicles so I may try to create something around that. Great job! And I’m so glad your family is home with you!