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For classroom themes, are you Team Farmhouse/Neutrals or Team Bright Colors? My Farmhouse Floral Classroom Decor Bundle is the best of both worlds. I was SO happy to hear Gabriela choose it as her decor bundle for the classroom makeover because I knew it fit her personality so well!
Gabriela loves pops of bright colors and her sweet, bubbly personality brings color and joy to everyone she meets. She also embodies the Farmhouse vibe by making you feel like you are family right off the bat! Her students this year are so lucky to have a teacher who will laugh with them, make them feel valued, and loved.
Checkout the classroom reveal video below!
Gabriela finished her senior year at the University of Central Florida in the midst of the COVID pandemic and she even founded a tutoring company. This girl’s drive for excellence is inspiring. I know that her drive for excellence will be infectious for her students, and that they will thrive in her classroom!
To check out her incredible company, go to https://www.mscolonsworldoflearning.com and be sure to follow her company on Instagram (@ms.colonswol). From the beginning, my goal was to give Gabriela a classroom that was as bright, hospitable, and incredible as she is! Keep reading to see the final product!
From the very first visit we had to Gabriela’s classroom, my mind was literally exploding with ideas because her room had SO much potential! Her room was a canvas just waiting to be fixed up :). I’m going to give you a quick tour of her entire room starting from her door and working left to right!
I was excited to find that the room had gray walls – gray is such a perfect neutral to dress up with pops of color and it won’t clash with many decor styles or color palettes. I loved Gabriela’s large cubbies and all the room that she had for storage. Gabriela picked her classroom decor bundle before she even saw her room, and it worked out perfectly because we could play off of the pink cubbies that were all over her room.
If you know me, you know I LOVE bulletin boards! I was so excited to find that she had TWO bulletin boards, and TWO white boards. These boards were just screaming for a cute border and to be maximized for beauty!
Gabriela had three HUGE windows 🙂 If you’re a teacher you know how powerful natural lighting can be on those tough days – it reminds you that there is life outside of school. Keep reading to see how we made those windows POP! The storage area at the back of the room had a lot of potential with the large space above. I knew that it would be a perfect place for posters!
Each classroom makeover is different because each one comes with different limitations and guidelines given by the administration team. When you’re designing your own classroom be flexible and don’t compare your classroom to anyone else’s. F
ortunately for Gabriela’s classroom makeover, our only limitation is that we weren’t allowed to paint the walls. I was so thankful to work with a great administration and custodial team that gave us maximum space for creativity.
Keep reading to see how we turned her classroom into a home away from home!
If the classroom is going to be a home away from home, it’s going to require making the front door a warm and inviting place! The welcome banner and the “Welcome To Our Classroom” posters make you feel like you’re going to a friend’s house for a glass of Sweet Tea. I used the Farmhouse Floral Growth Mindset Posters to create an affirmation station to the left of the door so that students can either start their day with confidence or walk to their specials with confidence 🙂
Above the classroom cabinets was the perfect space for the Classroom Expectations: “Work Hard, Be Kind, Play Safe”. Talking to teachers, one of their biggest struggles is filling large areas of empty wall. It’s a delicate balance between having too many things, and having so little that it looks bare. The classroom expectations filled the area perfectly and and the bright colors really popped on the gray background.
I decided to fill her cabinets with simple white storage to offset all the beautiful colors I was adding. The best part is that they come from Dollar Tree, Target, and Home Goods! Decorating is fun, but it’s even more fun when you save money 🙂
Decorating Tip: When decorating make sure you have a nice balance between bright colors and the simplicity of blacks and whites. Think of how you communicate with your words. If you talk too fast and fill every empty second with noise it’s hard for the message to be received. If you don’t talk at all, you’re not going to communicate anything.
In the same way you want to balance color that is making a statement with the simple silence of black and white supplemental pieces. (I designed my Editable Farmhouse Floral Labels and my Editable Farmhouse Floral Binder Covers with white backgrounds to accentuate the beautiful floral designs!)
Every teacher’s goal is that by the end of the year the class becomes a family! I wanted to create this space that Gabriela can use to make her class feel like a family right away. I started with Boxwood Panels for the wall to create a fun accent wall.
The panels are pricey, so I recommend if you’re going to use them to choose a small accent wall. To attach them to the wall I just used a standard stapler and made sure I added plenty of staples to hold it tight! Here is a budget friendly option if you want to create the same boxwood panel look.
My husband created the copper frame and the polaroid following the instructions on this blog. The blog used a brown polaroid which we tried, but the white frame looked so much better on the dark greenery on the wall. I used my Silhouette Cameo to create the black vinyl “3rd Grade” lettering – if you have a Cricuit or a similar vinyl cutting machine, you’ll be able to recreate this look perfectly!
Lastly, I used my Farmhouse Classroom Family Gallery Wall so she can add pictures she takes with her students in the polaroid frame. The letters and frames are set on black shelves I got from Hobby Lobby.
The cute teal chairs can be used for a fun reading area or for parent teacher conferences. The white circle rug gives this area the perfect home away from home touch. I am OBSESSED with how the teal chairs go with the pink flowers on the table 🙂
I used my Farmhouse Floral Birthday Display on the first bulletin board because it’s incredibly practical and brought a lot of color to the front of the room. Every teacher needs a 3 Tier Rolling Cart, so I chose a white one and loaded it with cute flowers, and a Rae Dunn Clock 🙂
I redesigned the Alphabet for this bundle based on a 5 color pastel color palette. Teacher Tip: If you’re starting your classroom design from scratch, choose 5-6 colors that you LOVE and that blend together well. I chose these colors based on the colors in my floral clipart.
The space below your white board is incredible untapped potential in most classrooms! In my Farmhouse Makeover and Bold Brights Makeover I used that space for the classroom rules. Since I already used the “Work Hard, Be Kind, Play Safe” signs in the room, I decided to fill the space with “Kindness Matters”. I love using positive messages, or classroom rules underneath the white board because it’s right at eye level when the kids sit on the carpet and it’s constantly reinforcing important lessons.
Lastly, to add to the Farmhouse feel I used push pins to attach the greenery garland to the top of the white board. The greenery at the top added a great frame after I added the polka dot border to the sides of the white board. The modern pink chair is the perfect touch to the front of the classroom.
Gabriela has such an incredible support team! She had family and friends buy her a new teacher desk, and so many other great things for this classroom. I love how rustic the teacher desk is, and how the gray wood patterns blended perfectly with the rest of the Farmhouse touches!
For this bulletin board, she had just enough space to perfectly frame the Floral Farmhouse Calendar, and I offset it with this beautiful Pink and Rose Gold Tassel Garland. It blended beautifully with her pink Teacher Toolbox.
Whether you’re looking to freshen up your home or your classroom (Side Note: doesn’t it seem like your classroom is your home during the school year?) one of the best places to start is the windows. The windows bring in natural lighting that instantly lifts the mood of any room.
We weren’t allowed to paint the room, but using vinyl paper can be a fun alternative. I really liked using this Brick Vinyl Paper from Target, because it not only gave us an accent wall, but it also gave texture to the room. For tips on setting this up, check out Step 2 of my Classroom Set Up Essentials Blog. The most important piece of advice if you’re going to put up vinyl is to be patient and use a Squeegee. The Squeege makes it easy to get long straight sections of vinyl paper on the wall.
To make the brick vinyl even cuter, I added an Ivy Garland in a diamond pattern on the wall. It was incredibly simple to set up because I used push pins to stick it to the wall. The only challenge was making sure the diamonds were forming similar sizes. I LOVE the final result, and wish I had this same design up in my own house 🙂
For an added touch, my husband built a planter that stuck out about 6 inches from the center window. I used faux flowers from Amazon, and stuck them into green foam to lift them a little bit. It truly made the entire window come alive, and unless you were right on top of the flowers you would never know they were fake. I love using fake florals in the classroom because you never have to water 🙂
Lastly, we come to the back of the room. From the moment I walked into the room, I knew that the space above the pink cubbies was prime real estate. Students walk to the cubbies every day to drop off their backpacks, so I wanted to use the space to give them positive messages.
I printed five of my favorite growth mindset posters from the bundle. If you want to print posters at home, I followed the same instructions I laid out in my Printing Poster Size Blog. I printed each poster 18 x 24 and put them in simple black frames that I bought for 50% off at Michaels. Once I had the posters in place, I dressed up the gaps between the posters with floral arrangements in white mason jars. (Seriously, there’s no place that flowers don’t instantly add beauty!
Lastly, I used my Floral Farmhouse labels to number the bins for Gabriela’s students to use all year long. Storage and organization do NOT have to be boring – it’s essential so why not make it pretty and something you want to look at everyday?
I could not have found a more deserving first year teacher! I hope this classroom makeover gives you inspiration to make your own classroom a home away from home. Always remember that your classroom is your own – you don’t need to compare it to anyone else’s. Make it what you want and make it a place that you and your students love coming to everyday. Make the walls reflect the beauty and warmth that your love and teaching ability will give all year long.
I’d love hear from you in the comments section: What as your favorite part of this classroom makeover? Was there anything that inspired you to make changes in your own room? If you are interested in creating the same look for your classroom be sure to check out the Farmhouse Floral Classroom Decor Bundle. I cannot wait to see how you transform your classroom to be a home away from home.
