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Olive et Oriel Wall Art & Wallpaper Australia

Wallpaper ships to 40+ countries · Duties & taxes paid · Australian Made since 2015

Custom-sized wallpaper · Free design consultation · Shipped worldwide

Kids Wallpaper: The Buying Guide for Rooms That Grow With the Child

Kids Wallpaper: The Buying Guide for Rooms That Grow With the Child

Buying wallpaper for a child's room might just be the most joyful decorating decision you'll ever make. Nothing else gets the reaction a child gives their new walls. We've been printing wallpaper for kids' rooms at our West Gosford facilities for more than ten years, and the orders tell the same lovely story: you want colour and character that won't look babyish in three years, materials safe enough for the tiniest resident, and a product that survives sticky fingers and the occasional rogue crayon. This guide walks you through all of it, plus the practical questions our team answers every week.

The stakes are worth naming out loud. A child's room is where imagination lives, and the walls set its temperature. Get the wallpaper right and the room becomes the favourite place in the house, bedtime negotiations included. Our kids wallpaper collection exists for exactly that moment, custom-printed to your wall's measurements so the design lands beautifully, whether the room is a boxy apartment bedroom or an attic full of angles.

Shell Confetti Wallpaper — styled in a contemporary Australian interior Pastel Sea Shells Wallpaper — styled in a contemporary Australian interior Texas Trails Country Wallpaper Mural — styled in a contemporary Australian interior

Shell Confetti Wallpaper  ·  Pastel Sea Shells Wallpaper  ·  Texas Trails Country Wallpaper Mural

Choosing a Design That Grows With Your Child

The most expensive mistake in kids' wallpaper is buying for the child your little one is this month, rather than the child they'll be in five years. Licensed-character walls are usually outgrown by the next birthday. What lasts are worlds, not franchises: rainbows, animals, oceans, botanical forests, celestial skies. These give a four-year-old everything they want from a wall, and still look considered when the same child is nine.

  • Under five: soft, friendly motifs at a generous scale, think animals, rainbows, clouds. Palettes in sage, dusty pink, warm sand and soft blue read calm at bedtime and bright at playtime.
  • Five to nine: worlds to disappear into. Ocean scenes, jungle canopies, space. This is the age our mural-scale designs really earn their keep, turning a bedroom wall into somewhere to be.
  • Nine and up: pattern over picture. Stripes, checks, gentle botanicals, surf-culture coastal. Our teen boys and teen girls wallpaper collections pick up right where the kids range hands over.
  • Shared and sibling rooms: choose a world both ages can happily live in, and let the bedding do the age-specific work. Coastal and botanical designs are the diplomatic winners here.
Buy the wall for the child they're becoming, not the month they're in. The room stays loved for years, not seasons.

Peel and Stick, or Paste-the-Wall, in a Kids' Room?

Both work beautifully, and the room's timeline is what decides for you. Peel and stick is the redecorator's friend: self-adhesive, repositionable while you're putting it up, and removable without a tradesperson when the dinosaur era ends. That makes it the go-to for rentals and for parents who love changing things around. Paste-the-wall, our smooth matte non-woven, lies a touch flatter and shrugs off the humidity swings of an Australian summer, so it's the better choice when the design is meant to last into the teen years. Both are printed with the same low-VOC pigment inks, which is exactly the kind of question you're right to ask. The straight answer: everything leaving our floor is printed with water-based pigment inks on quality substrates, and has been for a decade. Our removable wallpaper buying guide covers the full comparison, including the textured-wall question.

Make It Theirs: the Custom Advantage

This is where buying from the actual manufacturer changes the product entirely. Every kids' wallpaper order is printed to your wall's exact width and height at our facilities, so the whale pod sits where the whale pod should sit, not cropped off at the cot line because a stock roll ran out of wall. Murals scale properly too: a 2.4 metre apartment wall and a 3 metre Queenslander wall each get the full composition. And when the wall is genuinely unusual, sloped attic ceilings being the classic, our custom wallpaper service adjusts the artwork to fit the architecture. Measuring takes five minutes with our measuring guide, and if you send us your wall dimensions with a photo, the team will confirm the design placement before anything prints, free of charge. The anticipation between ordering and the reveal is, as every parent who has done it will tell you, half the fun for the child.

Palermo Stripe by Brooke Ritchie Wallpaper — styled in a contemporary Australian interior Peach Pink Prism Wallpaper — styled in a contemporary Australian interior

Palermo Stripe by Brooke Ritchie Wallpaper  ·  Peach Pink Prism Wallpaper

The Practical Questions Parents Ask

  • Cleaning: our smooth matte surface wipes gently with a barely damp cloth and a drop of dish soap. Crayon usually gives up under a little patient attention. Permanent marker, sadly, is permanent everywhere.
  • Durability: wallpaper at kid height takes more contact than any other wall in the house. Quality substrates and dense pigment printing are why ours holds up. Thin imported paper is why the cheap version doesn't.
  • Safety: water-based pigment inks, low-VOC, no solvent smell in the room. The material questions that matter most for the smallest bedrooms are the ones we're happy to answer straight.
  • Installation: a kids' room feature wall is a first-timer-friendly project: two to three hours with our paste-the-wall guide, or faster with peel and stick. Prefer to hand it over? Our installer directory lists professionals who work with our materials regularly.
  • The $4.99 sample: a 48cm x 40cm (19in x 16in) print of the actual material. Stick it on the actual wall, let the child cast a vote, and check the colours against the bedding in morning and evening light. It's the cheapest insurance in decorating and the reason our exchange conversations are so rare.

Bringing the Whole Room Together

The rooms parents photograph and send us all share a quiet formula: a wallpapered feature wall behind the bed or cot, framed art on the adjacent wall, and one flexible element, usually decals, for the child's own curation. Because our nursery art, kids decals and wallpaper all print on the same floor, the palettes genuinely coordinate rather than just approximately matching. If you want to go deeper into boys' or girls' rooms, including the colour psychology by age, our boys' room buying guide and girls' bedroom showcase are the two places to browse next.

Rosé Reverie in Pink Wallpaper — styled in a contemporary Australian interior Sweet Château in Pink Wallpaper — styled in a contemporary Australian interior Petite Pink Palais Wallpaper — styled in a contemporary Australian interior

Rosé Reverie in Pink Wallpaper  ·  Sweet Château in Pink Wallpaper  ·  Petite Pink Palais Wallpaper

Why Parents Choose Us for Their Kids' Walls

Simply put, because the combination doesn't exist anywhere else. Australian-made at two West Gosford facilities for more than ten years. Custom-printed to your wall's measurements, not sold from stock rolls. Low-VOC pigment inks you can ask about and get a straight answer on. Free shipping on all wallpaper orders, worldwide delivery to over 40 countries with all import duties paid, so the checkout price is the final price in Sydney and San Francisco alike. A $4.99 sample to take the risk out of the decision, four business days production on full-price orders, and more than 350,000 homes served since 2015. The child's reaction on reveal day is the real product. Everything above is how we make sure you get it.

Real Rooms: How Parents Actually Use the Range

The orders tell the story better than any theory. The most common kids' wallpaper purchase is a single feature wall behind the bed, in a mural-scale design, with the remaining walls left painted. Maximum effect, contained budget, one afternoon's install. The second most common is the shared-room diplomatic solution: one worldly design (oceans and botanicals lead the way here), with each child's territory gently marked by their own framed print from the kids art range above the bed. And the fastest-growing category is the teen refresh, where a childhood mural hands over to pattern: checks, stripes and coastal graphics from the teen ranges, usually ordered by the teenager themselves, often with alarmingly good taste.

Two practical patterns worth copying from our most experienced repeat customers. First, they order the sample with the child rather than for them, because a five-year-old with a vote treats the wall as theirs, and the bedtime standoffs genuinely soften. Second, they photograph the room before the install, because the before-and-after pair is the single most satisfying keepsake in home decorating.

Budgeting a Kids' Room That Lasts

  • Feature wall, not four walls: one papered wall delivers ninety percent of the effect at a quarter of the coverage. Spend the difference on the art and bedding that finish the scheme.
  • Buy the five-year design: worlds over franchises, as we've said. The maths is simple: one lasting design beats two outgrown ones on cost, and on three weekends of your life.
  • Sample first, always: $4.99 against a papered wall's budget isn't a cost, it's the elimination of the only meaningful risk.
  • Coordinate from one maker: when your wallpaper, art and decals all come from the same production floor, the sage in the wallpaper IS the sage in the print, not a near-miss from a different supplier's ink book.

Install Day With Kids in the House: the Realistic Version

A note from the parents on our own production floor. Feature walls install cleanest during daycare hours or after bedtime: two uninterrupted hours beats four supervised ones every time. Peel and stick produces no wet mess, so the furniture only needs pulling a metre from the wall. Paste-the-wall wants a drop sheet and slightly more elbow room. Let the room air for an hour afterwards, more courtesy than necessity given how gentle the low-VOC inks are. And plan the reveal properly. The single best moment this product produces is a child walking into a finished room, so finish it, close the door, and make an event of the opening. The before-and-after photos our customers send us are never really about the wallpaper alone. They're about the face in front of it. If your room needs the full scheme thought through, our team plans kids' rooms by email daily, free: send us a wall photo, your measurements and the child's current obsessions, and we'll send back a composed plan from wallpaper to decals to art.

The Questions Worth Asking Any Wallpaper Seller

Wherever you buy, three questions will separate real manufacturers from importers, and a kids' room deserves the answers. What inks do you print with, and are they low-VOC? Where is the wallpaper made, and to whose measurements? And what happens if the colour looks wrong in my room's light? Our answers: water-based low-VOC pigment inks; made to your wall's measurements at our two West Gosford facilities on the NSW Central Coast; and a $4.99 sample of the actual material exists precisely so the colour question is settled before printing, with a team one email away who will look at your room photo and give you honest advice, including when a design is wrong for the space. Sellers who can't answer those three questions are asking you to gamble a child's room on stock photography. We built the whole operation so you'd never have to.

No Beach, No Bush, No Problem: Coastal, Botanical and Beyond Anywhere

Something worth mentioning if you're decorating inland or in a city apartment: kids' rooms borrow beautifully from every landscape, and none of them need to match your postcode. The child in a Melbourne terrace can wake up under a jungle canopy. The nursery in a Brisbane townhouse can feel like a soft ocean cove. The bedroom in a Perth suburb can be a starlit sky. All you need is the palette to feel right for the room's light, which is exactly what your $4.99 sample confirms. If natural light is on the cooler side, lean toward warm sand, dusty pink, soft terracotta and gentle sage. If your room floods with warm afternoon sun, cooler blues and greens will keep everything feeling calm. The rule of thumb our stylists share with parents most often: go one shade softer than your instinct says, sample it in your child's real room light, and let the textiles carry the rest.

Frequently Asked Questions

What wallpaper works best in kids' rooms?

Designs that outlast phases: animals, rainbows, oceans and botanical worlds rather than licensed characters, printed on quality substrates with low-VOC water-based pigment inks. Peel and stick suits rentals and frequent redecorators. Paste-the-wall suits designs you want to last into the teen years.

Is wallpaper safe for children's bedrooms and nurseries?

Ours is: water-based pigment inks, low-VOC, no solvent smell, printed on quality substrates at our Australian facilities. These are exactly the right questions to ask any wallpaper seller, and the answers you get back should be as specific as ours.

Can kids' wallpaper actually handle cleaning?

Yes. Our smooth matte surface wipes clean with a barely damp cloth and mild soap. It's built for the highest-contact walls in the house. Scrubbing and spray cleaners aren't needed and aren't wise on any printed surface.

Should I choose peel and stick or paste-the-wall for a child's room?

Peel and stick for rentals, frequent changes and fast installs. Paste-the-wall for a flatter finish and longer-term designs. Both carry the same inks and the same print quality. The difference is adhesive and how long you want it to last. Our removable wallpaper buying guide covers the full decision.

How much wallpaper do I need for a feature wall?

Measure width at the widest point and height from floor to ceiling. Our five-minute measuring guide shows you exactly how. Because every order is printed to your measurements, you buy precisely the wall you have, with the design scaled correctly to fit it.

Can I get a sample before I commit?

Yes, and you really should: $4.99 for a 48cm x 40cm print of the actual material. Test it on the actual wall, check the colours against the room's light and the bedding, and let the child cast a vote. It turns an online guess into a confirmed decision.

Do you ship kids' wallpaper overseas?

Yes. Free shipping on all wallpaper orders, delivery to more than 40 countries, and all import duties paid on international wallpaper orders, so the price you see at checkout is the final price, whether the nursery is in Melbourne or Manchester.

How long does production take?

Four business days on full-price orders, printed to your measurements at our NSW Central Coast facilities, then shipped free. The reveal-day countdown is, according to every parent who has written to us about it, a feature rather than a wait.

Find your child's new world in the kids wallpaper collection, coordinate it with nursery wallpaper, and order the $4.99 sample that settles the whole thing.

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