Decorating Your Home with Maps

If you’re looking for an original way to decorate your home, consider decorating with maps.

There’s a wide variety of map formats, decor elements, and styles from which to choose.

A person’s age doesn’t matter when it comes to decorating with maps because there’ll always be a map out there that’s perfect.

Tips on decorating your home with maps

The simpler a room is, the better. Keeping things simple will prevent the room decor from being overwhelming.

Try not to mix multiple maps in the same room; there’d be too much going on and the result might not be too visually pleasing.

When decorating, consider the person who’ll be using that space and find a map that matches his or her preferences. In addition, think about the space available.

If you have old maps lying around at home, this could be a great chance to put them to use.

You’ll find other maps as well, but the most common types are world maps or one repeated image of a map (of anything).

Ideas on using maps to decorate your home

Below, we’ll give you some ideas that are perfect for children’s rooms.

• Garland maps: garlands are easy to make at home. All you have to do is cut triangles, flowers, hearts, etc. out of old maps. Attach them to some string and hang them along a wall or from one corner of the room to another.
• Furniture: you can decorate it with maps yourself, but some stores sell furniture already with a map design. There are all kinds of furniture with maps: chairs, stools, tables, dressers, armchairs…
• Posters: there are plenty of ways to decorate with map posters. You could try framing different parts of a map and hanging them on the walls.

Another idea is buying (or making) a themed map; for example, one with animals or international food. If you choose these kinds of maps, it won’t matter if they aren’t that colorful.

More decorating ideas using maps

• Paper objects: origami is an art that offers us many decor possibilities. It’s suitable for all ages, so you could try doing origami crafts with your kids.

You can place these paper art forms on tables, shelves or dressers.

• Blankets, comforters, rugs, and curtains: there are two main kinds of decor for these. First, you might find a monotone map design on the fabric. The other kind of decor covers the entire fabric with all kinds of images or a repeated one.

As for rugs, there’s a really popular rug that you’ve probably seen before. It’s a rug that shows a city and its main buildings and roads, designed so that children can play on it with their toy cars.

• Globe: using a globe is the simplest idea of the lot, but that doesn’t mean it won’t look great. All you have to do is choose the most appropriately-sized globe for the room that you want to decorate.

Even more decorating ideas using maps: teenage rooms

• Painting a map on the wall: world maps are most often the choice for walls.

You could try painting the map with just a few colors so that it matches the rest of the room. If you want to paint with a lot of colors, you could try adjusting the colors according to the area of the room that you’re painting.

Another idea is just outlining the countries, using the wall’s original color as the color fill.

You could use thumbtacks to mark the places that you’ve visited, too.

If you have a brick wall, try painting it and then removing the paint in some areas to create a map.

• Maps on pallets: place pallets behind your headboard and paint them as if you’re painting onto your wall. As always, you can use one or multiple colors.

Sometimes, people even use fabric with a printed image of a map.

• As we mentioned before, posters or images. There’s actually a perfect poster available for travel-lovers. It’s a single-colored map. Every time you visit a place, you have to scratch off the place with a coin, unveiling the color beneath.

To switch things up a little, you can also use old, metro or road maps of the cities that you like.

And here’s a cool and original idea to try. First, choose a map of a city, country or even of a continent that you’ve visited. You can use your photographs and place them on the areas of the map where they were taken.

• Block letters: you can find block letters in stores or wrap them yourself in maps. After, use them to spell out your favorite words. Many people choose words that have direct messages about feelings; for example, love, happiness, laughter…

Conclusion

As you’ve read today in our post, the possibilities are endless. You can enjoy beautiful results and you can personalize your own designs.