5 Important Things To Consider When You’re Planning A Pirate Themed Bedroom

When you first decide to decorate your little one’s bedroom with a pirate theme, it can be very easy to jump right into it without any planning. Because after all, what could be more simple (and fun) than getting some cool pirate themed furniture and accessories, right? Don’t do it.

Just like with any room decorating, getting a pirate bedroom to look and feel right, will require some thought and planning.

In this article, I go through 5 important things that you need to consider when you’re still in the planning phase.

1. Focal Point

The bedroom needs to have 1 focal point. There are instances when you could get away with 2 focal points (especially if the room is big) but if you’re new to decorating or not quite sure how you can pull this off, you should stick with one.

Why is this important? If you don’t plan and think about your focal point, you will most likely get a bunch of pirate decor of all shapes, textures, sizes and colors and the whole room would end up looking like one big chaotic mess.

The focal point of a bedroom is usually the bed but with a pirate themed bedroom it can be something else too. For example, if you’re going to have a ship mast headboard with a big pirate flag, that might very well be your focal point. In that case, it is advisable to not overwhelm the room with big patterned pirate bedding. The bedding set should be more subtle so it doesn’t compete for attention with the headboard.

This is why it’s crucial that you decide on what is going to be the focal point of the room from the start. All the things you get after that will hopefully work towards highlighting that point.

You might decide that your main focal point is going to be a pirate themed mural, decal on an accent wall. In that case, any decorations and accessories you use must not overshadow the wall decor. One way of doing this is to place any stand alone pirate themed accessories as far away from the wall as possible. And if you can get them in subtle, neutral colors the better.

So to summarize, decide what your focal point is going to be and then make sure that everything else in the room does not overshadow it.

2. Skull Fear

This might seem obvious but before you buy anything (or start planning and designing anything even), you first need to establish whether your child is scared of skulls. Just because they’ve mentioned that they like pirates, doesn’t necessarily mean that they like skulls.

So even though the skulls and crossbones is the universal symbol for pirates, your child might be referring to something else when they’re referring to pirates.

If you do find out they’re afraid of skulls but love pirates, there are plenty of ways you can go around decorating their room with a pirate theme. Instead of the skull and crossbones motif you could use a design of a little boy or girl’s face in a pirate hat. You could use skulls that are not too detailed and have simpler lines, i.e. have a more cartoon style look. Always check with your child to see whether they’d still be scared of these style of skulls.

So do yourself a favor (especially if your child is under 5 years old) and before you start doing anything, figure out whether he or she is scared of skulls.

3. Dual Purpose

Another thing that you need to consider when planning your pirate themed bedroom is whether the room will have a dual purpose. Will it serve solely as a bedroom or will you be incorporating a playroom in it as well? This is usually done when it’s a good sized room with plenty of extra space for play time.

If you decide to go for a bedroom and playroom combination, then you need to think about using every little bit of space wisely. Think storage (plenty of storage) and safety.

4. Cohesiveness

Cohesiveness in the design and style is key when it comes to home decor. But cohesiveness need to be reflected across the whole house, not just in the kids bedroom. So before you start designing and decorating their room, you need to consider how the room’s style will fit in with the rest of your home. What design elements could you incorporate in their bedroom to make it blend well with the rest of the rooms? Could you pick a couple of colors for the kids bedroom that are consistently present in each and every room in your house? What about style? (e.g. if you have a minimalist style, the kids bedroom needs to have a somewhat minimalist vibe to it as well).

5. The Future Is Now

When you’re still in planning mode, another thing that you need to consider is what you’re going to do if/when the kids outgrow the room. Will you be doing away with the whole pirate theme altogether? Will you substitute a few key pirate themed items with a new theme? Will you be in a position (money wise) to simply redecorate the whole room with a new theme in a couple of years’ time?

This is something that you need to at least think about, so you don’t end up getting nasty “surprises” when you feel that it’s time to redecorate the room. For example, if money is tight, perhaps getting a pirate ship bed might not be ideal if you’re going to have to change it in a few years’ time because the kids got bored from the pirate theme. A wiser choice would probably be to get a regularly shaped bed and use a pirate themed bedding set. That way, once they’re bored with pirates, you only need to change the bedding set, not the whole bed!