Sports Themed Room

If you have a sports fan in your family, chances are at some point they'll want you to make them a special team room. A sports themed room can be challenging because with their saturated colours and logos they can easily appear tacky.

Here are some suggestions:

1) Use the jersey colours and patterns for your main colours:


In this case, I chose the Oiler's "home" colours because blue is my son's favourite colour and because the room is large enough to handle such a saturated colour. If it was a smaller room however, I would have gone with the "away" colours (white), simply because the dark navy would have closed the room in too much.


I followed the design of the jersey and transferred it onto the walls creating a bottom border, which helped to break up the dominance of the dark walls by adding greater interest through contrast, colour, and line. This stripe pattern then became a point for repetition in my textiles.


2) Resist the urge to over-do the logo:


This is an easy trap to fall into when creating a sports themed room. My suggestion would be to avoid choosing fabrics, wall paper, etc that use the logo repeatedly on a very small scale. These are in my opinion, too busy, and can quickly make things look tacky. Instead, choose one wall as a point of focus with one big logo. You may find that this may be enough on it's own, but you can include smaller logos elsewhere in the room for repetition, just make sure that they serve a design purpose and are not just thrown-in haphazardly.

Painting logos can be difficult, especially when on a large scale. My suggestion would be to make a transparent photocopy of the logo which can then be projected and traced onto the wall in pencil, and then painted in. If you do not have access to this equipment you can make a stencil out of poster board, tape it to wall with painters tape, and paint over top of it.

This worked well for me when it came to the lettering of the logo, but horribly for the circular shape which warped when wet with paint. To fix it, I had to place a push-pin in the center of my logo, attach a piece of string to it equaling the length of the radius of the circle that I wanted to create, and attach a pencil to the other end of the string. Pulling the string taut I was able to draw the necessary outer circle and corresponding inside circles by shortening the string.

Whatever you choose to do, do not attempt to free-hand it! Unless you are exceptionally artistically gifted, chances are the results will look sloppy and amateurish, and you will not be happy with the results.


3) Accessorize with equipment/objects associated with the sport:
In this case I used framed pictures of the teams most famous players, and hockey sticks which I attached to shelves. Whatever you use, think creatively, and make sure that the object(s) you choose to use serve a design purpose. Do not just randomly thrown it in because it is a part of the sport thinking that it will just "fit."