Usually we know it immediately when we enter the children’s space in a church building. The colors are vibrant, the themes are bright and energetic, and the furnishings are designed to be attractive to children. For children’s areas to be both fun and successful, it’s important to understand what’s possible, and within your budget, with interior design for children’s spaces in your church building. It’s also important to appreciate how a church design that includes attractive children’s spaces will draw families to your church building.
An Interior Design with Bold Colors Sends a Bright Message
If families with young children are searching for a church home, parents will want to know that you are investing in children’s ministry. One easy and relatively inexpensive way to do this is to decorate the walls of the children’s area in your church building with bold colors.
As you can see in this image from Evangelical United Methodist Church in Greenville, Ohio, you don’t want to be afraid to use color. While the colors in the worship space of your church building will be muted in order to focus attention on the message of Christ, children are drawn to bright colors. The use of color here draws children in and tells their families that you are investing in the next generation. Even the furnishings echo those bright colors and create a welcoming theme with little additional investment.
Another advantage of this simple, but clear, use of color in your interior design is that it’s just paint, so it’s relatively inexpensive and easy to repair or update. This means that if your budget is limited, you can still create and maintain an inviting children’s area in your church building.
Improving Your Children’s Area Church Design by Stages
If you’ve got a little more money to work with, you can set the basic point for your children’s area and improve it in stages over time. Here at Blue Grass United Methodist Church in Evanston, Indiana, we began with a simple paint job of blue sky and green grass. The clouds, tree, and children in the scene are graphics applied to these walls. In this way, you can get started on a theme with a limited budget, then add additional graphics over time. With a basic wood-look floor and cheery outdoor scene, children and their parents are drawn in toward the check-in station, then to the brightly colored classroom doors.
Making Your Church Building a Magnet for Children
If you can make a more major investment in the interior design of your children’s spaces, consider floor-to-ceiling wall graphics. As you can see in this photo from Crossview Church in Grabill, Indiana, there are bold and engaging graphics available with biblical themes. In this interior design, you can see toward the rear of the image that we also integrated flooring with a water-like appearance and a check-in desk fashioned like a ship. With a holistic view toward children’s church design, you can make a bold statement to all guests that children’s ministry is an integral part of your church vision.
Whether it’s a bold and fun space with color, a wall-graphic based theme, or a more dramatic theme for the entire children’s area with 3-dimensional elements, interior design for your children’s space should clearly fit in with your vision of ministry with children. To learn more about other aspects of interior design and your church building, sign up today for our free i3 webinars.