Decorating With Traffic and Road Signs

Using traffic and road signs can be a great way to decorate teenagers' bedrooms, or communal spaces in your home. We'll tell you everything you need to know in this article.

Of all the many urban styles you can use to decorate your home, the street smart style is one of our favorites. This fun look involves decorating with traffic and road signs, as well as items such as license plates and traffic lights.

Choosing a specific theme will make it far easier for you to decorate your rooms. With this style, this shouldn’t be too difficult, as you don’t need to come up with any kind of elaborate strategy. What you do need, however, are plenty of road signs.

The best thing about the street smart style is that it can be either modern or retro. This also means that you can take inspiration from pretty much anywhere.

To make your decor stand out, we recommend using a mixture of modern and vintage road signs (even if they’re only imitations). There are so many different ways you can incorporate them into your decor, from using them to make furniture, to hanging them like paintings.

Road signs, license plates and more

By incorporating old, faded-looking signs, you can use the street smart style to give your home that grunge feel. You can then go on to accentuate this look by adding elements such as brick, wood, and iron.

However, you don’t just need to go down the road of nostalgic, rustic decor. You could also go for a more futuristic look. For example, you could keep the rest of your room fairly simple, with plain white walls and straight lines, leaving your traffic signs as the only source of color.

You could also incorporate some unique and original elements, like the famous Ampelmännchen souvenirs typical of Germany. Another good idea is to use signs in different languages, to give your room a more international feel.

Top tips for street smart decor

1. Wallpaper

If your bedroom doesn’t have brick walls, we recommend using wallpaper to achieve your desired look and texture. However, it’s important not to overwhelm your room. To avoid this, it’s best to only hang wallpaper on one or two walls.

Alternatively, you can also play around with chalkboard paint, applying it to a column or small section of the wall to give your decor a distinctive touch.

2. Traffic signs

People generally tend to incorporate traffic signs of all different shapes, sizes, and colors. However, you could simply decorate with one specific type, choosing ones that are all the same color. It’ll all depend on your own personal taste.

It’s important to remember that the textiles you use to decorate your room should give greater prominence to your traffic signs. Try to avoid bright, vibrant colors, and go for more neutral tones instead.

3. Traffic lights

Although they’re not essential, traffic lights are great for emphasizing that urban feel. People often use them as an additional light for their rooms.

That said, you don’t actually need to use traffic lights themselves. Instead, you could simply incorporate colored lights to imitate a traffic light – red, orange, and green.

4. Traffic and road signs – license plate murals

License plates are great for decorating bedroom walls. However, there are other ways you can incorporate them into your room. For example, you could use them as a headboard for your bed. You could even arrange the numbers by date, color or country of origin.

If there are already plenty of decorations in your room, you don’t need to cover the entire wall with license plates. You could simply place a few above the door, or arrange three or four in a line down your wall.

5. Vinyl decals

When it comes to decorating your walls, vinyl decals are a great option. You can find some really original designs that’ll give your room a whole different look. For example, a highway decal (like the one in the image below) would look great on a white bedroom wall, and make the room feel more spacious.

6. Traffic and road signs – furniture

Incorporating road signs into your furniture is a great way to create a fresh and original look for your space. You don’t need too much technical skill for this – just a little creativity. People generally use them for making desks and tables of all different shapes, whether rectangular, triangular or circular.

Warning!

Remember, under no circumstances should you ever take road and traffic signs from the street. In many countries, this actually is prohibited by law. You can always buy them from specialist decorating stores, or even make them yourself at home.