Cool Kids Furniture

Design Ideas for Alice in Wonderland Theme
Mock up of a themed kids room - Alice in Wonderland Artist's rendering of a room with the Alice in Wonderland theme.

Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland is absolutely packed full of outrageous fun, color and vivacity. Concepts and characters so alive with unique imaginative imagery as to leap off the pages (or the walls) and engage you at any stage.

Stimulation:

This theme offers two levels of stimulation, medium and high. There is really no aspect of this tale that lends itself to respite or calm. Even the white rabbit, a classically tranquil creature is hurrying while fretting about being late. The rose garden is full of lively and agitated characters and the tea party is presided over by a crazy and somewhat aggressive character wearing a large hat, and then of course there's the Cheshire Cat , a perpetually smiling magic cat that has a tendency to disappear, rather gradually.

Every element of every tale within this story is explicitly designed to enthrall and bamboozle. Fantastic for a child with a high threshold for stimulation, but not so great for those who need their bedroom to be a escape from a world of over stimulation.

Color Schemes:

Toddler: Denim blue and white (the colors of Alice's pinafore). Ginger Orange for the Cheshire Cat.

Child: Red Black and white of cards and roses, and grass green, plus blue and white and Cheshire Cat orange.

Opportunities for Learning:

Alice was really a very daring and some might say irresponsible little girl. Certainly she was brave but look at all the trouble that her curiosity got her into. Running off after strange rabbits on her own, drinking the contents of little bottles, just because the label told her to, and talking to, oh so many strange characters. The role play and discursive possibilities of this theme are surely endless and of course loads of fun.

Reassuring and Comforting:

Taking care to emphasize the more benign characters and portions of the story over the more agitating and aggressive ones, images of the White Rabbit and Alice herself, however harried by circumstances are very pleasant visually. For younger children one might use the White Rabbit as a theme itself, introducing cuddly toy rabbits and paintings of rabbits peering out from behind the furniture, rabbit mobiles.

Feng Shui:

Elements absent in this tale are stone and water so try to include a picture of a mountain or rock and perhaps a pond or even a very large teacup.

Budget vs Time and Talent:

Perhaps paint Alice with her waist at the ceiling and her feet at the baseboard so large from drinking from the Drink Me bottle as to have outgrown the room itself, and don't forget to include the little bottle itself. Paint a bunk bed red with white spots of the toadstool and include the Cheshire Cat floating above the top bunk.

Lampshades in blue and white gingham fringed with white lace just like Alice's pinafore. A rocking rabbit and perhaps even white rabbit slippers.