Looking for the perfect wall decor for a teen bedroom or college dorm room with minimal damage to the walls? Follow these simple steps to create a DIY poster board photo collage.
Last year we completed my daughter Emma’s teen bedroom makeover. We created a more grown-up space for her with areas for studying, getting ready for her day, and a comfortable place just to hang out in. She wanted a white and gray room with touches of gold and we are so happy with the outcome of her room makeover.
Kids and teens with phones love taking photos. I mean honestly don’t we all love to document our lives? I know I do! And what’s more fun than displaying the pictures we take. I remember as a teenager covering my closet doors in snapshots of my friends and me. Did you do that too?
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We had added a beautiful grid style gallery wall above her dresser when we completed her room makeover which she loves. But it’s not super easy to change out those photos since they are in frames. Plus…there are only 9 frames. Not nearly enough! If you have girls you know how many pictures they take.
We needed to come up with an idea so she could add more candid photos of her friends and family. Since I had just completed her room makeover I wanted to find a way to minimize the damage to her freshly painted walls. A DIY photo collage on poster board was the perfect solution! That way we could tape pictures to one or two poster boards and just have to attach the boards to the wall rather than individual photos taped all over the wall.
While Emma went to work selecting the photos she wanted to print I ran to the store for some supplies. By adding the photos to a new album on her phone Emma was able to easily upload that album to Shutterfly for printing. Shutterfly usually has some sort of promotion going on so this project was fairly inexpensive. And they make it super easy for you to pick your prints up the same day at Walgreens, Target or CVS. Or you can choose to have them shipped directly to your house.
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Supplies needed
All the photos were printed in a standard 4×6 and we had a mix of vertical and horizontal pictures. We also trimmed some of the prints to a 4×4 size. Emma started laying out the prints on the poster board as she liked them piecing the different sizes together to fit on the board. Once she had all her pictures laid out she was able to easily lift each one to add the double stick tape to the backs and adhere to the poster boards.
We used a heavyweight poster board so that it would be strong enough to hold the weight of all the photos once they were taped on. After all the pictures were attached we used command strips to hang the poster boards directly onto the wall.
Putting the two poster boards together in the corner filled that space in her room above her cozy chair.
I’m going, to be honest, I’d love my kid’s rooms to look just like a Pottery Barn Teen catalog. But I had to put my visions aside for this DIY poster board photo collage project because it was Emma’s vision for her room!
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Sometimes the decor in our kids’ and teens’ rooms isn’t necessarily perfect and magazine-worthy. But I bet it’s just perfect to them! And isn’t creating a space in our homes just for them to retreat to in this crazy world more important than having a picture-perfect space?
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