Top Decor Tips for Small Speech Rooms

Following up on last weeks post on the top 10 worst speech room locations, today we are bringing you our top tips on how to best decorate a small speech room!  If you happen to be in a small space like one of those we mentioned last week, or something similar, then read on to find how to make the best of it.

There are some décor guidelines which apply to all small spaces including small speech rooms, such as:

• Avoid Large Pieces of Furniture: Try to use small pieces of furniture where possible. When considering your own desk – use as small as you can manage with.  (This might mean making friends with the custodian to try and trade items from elsewhere in a school based setting!)

We all need storage – and furniture items can be bulky – but when you are short on space you need to use every inch wisely. Maximize the space you have  with clever organization! Lauren at BusyBees Speech has great organization ideas including using doors with hanging files to make use of every square inch of space!

Visit Laurens site to see more on her storage ideas here!

• Ask if you have a paint choice: If you do, choose soft, light shades on the walls. When choosing a paint color, we can easily be tempted to try to brighten things up a bit by choosing a nice bright color – but with smaller spaces, it’s best to opt for the lighter colors!

I always like to have a colourful bulletin board in my speech room and couldn’t live without this, no matter how small the space!  So I would choose one wall to use as a ‘color’ wall.  Ask that it be painted it in a light shade and then put your bulletin board and necessary wall fixings onto this wall.  If your room is narrow then maybe choose the shorter wall for this as it will make the room feel more regular – choosing the long wall in a narrow space will make it feel even narrower.  Just remember not to be tempted to overdo the décor on the walls – this will enclose your space even further!  I love the cool shades that Nicole over at Speech Peeps has used in her speech room –

visit her blog here to see more of her room – she has used beautiful shades on her bulletin boards too – well worth seeing! 

• Good Lighting: Sometimes the small speech rooms we inherit can be poorly lit with little or no natural daylight.  One of the first tasks you should undertake is try to make sure that you have good light.  In situations with no natural light you may be forced to add desk and floor lamps if necessary. Good lighting is essential in a small space – there is nothing worse than a dimly lit small space!  You and your students deserve good light!

• Multi-functional Furniture: Try to find ways to make furniture suit more than one purpose – like making-over  the back or side of a filing cabinet to use as a magnetic board.  Double up low level storage cabinets as seating for students by putting soft cushions on top – or take the cushions off and use them as tables.  I just love this idea from Keri at Kinder Keri to place vinyl onto desk tops! Check out how she did this on her blog here.

In small speech rooms you need to be very clever with the precious storage you have and by cutting out on boards like this, you will have made space for some other resources!

• Super Organization: Small spaces look bigger and more spacious without clutter and fussiness.  The key to avoiding clutter is really clever organization.  Every square inch of storage space has to be maximized!  Check out this unusual and innovative ceiling level storage idea at the Family Handyman.

See more on this cool idea here!  I’m not sure if this would pass fire regulations in some school buildings but if it does, then this could be a way to store your out-of-season resources – definitely out of the way!

I find that I always have lots of printed resources sitting around in folders and sleeves here and there untidily and I’ve been searching for a solution to this problem: I’ve found it and have to share it with you!  By laminating envelopes, you can create durable storage for much-loved printed resources.  I saw this idea on Love Laughter and Prep, where Lauren shows you how she made hers:

You can see Laurens instructions for making yourself a bunch of these here.  If you label the flap of the envelope, then you could stack the envelopes in categorized crates to find them easily!  Can’t wait to get started on this one!

So I hope you will have found some useful tips for your speech room in our guide today – I know we will definitely be trying a few out – good organization is great in any size of speech room!