Decorating a dollhouse gives you the artistic license to indulge in your interior design fantasies, at a fraction of the cost of doing up a real house. And while you can’t live in your dollhouse of course, decorating it is a great way to have some creative fun!
Below I share what I did and what I learnt when I decorated my Exmouth dollhouse that I got from Freecycle.
How to strip a dollhouse
If you’re decorating a new dollhouse that you’ve made from a kit, you can skip this step as you won’t need to prepare the house before decorating it (although you might want to add a coat of primer to seal the wood). But if, like me, you have a dollhouse that needs taking back to bare wood before redecorating, then here are some helpful tips.
- Removing carpet – if the dollhouse carpet is stuck on, then you’ll need to remove this using a hair dryer and a wallpaper scraper. Simply heat the carpet up, which will melt the glue, and then scrape the carpet away from the floor with the wallpaper scraper. This isn’t a difficult job but it can get very messy, so check out the video below for a step-by-step guide to making the task as easy as possible.
- Removing wallpaper – just like in a real house, the best way to remove dollhouse wallpaper is with warm water and a wallpaper scraper. Depending on the glue that’s been used and how well the paper is stuck down, you may not even need to wet the paper, it might just peel off.
- Sanding the walls and floor – if the dollhouse has been painted with gloss paint (which has a very shiny, reflective surface) then you’ll need to sand the top layer of this off before you repaint it or wallpaper it, as paint and glue won’t stick to glossy surface. I had to sand the floors of my dollhouse as I’d managed to take a few chunks of wood out of the floor with the wallpaper scraper while removing the carpet!
- Prime the walls – use white primer to seal the walls and help prevent your topcoat of paint from seeping into the wood. I used a 250ml tin of Dulux Primer and Undercoat For Wood – you can buy it from Amazon for £9.45
How to paint a dollhouse
Painting a dollhouse is a fiddly job as everything is on such a small scale. The best way to make it easier for yourself is to remove as much as possible out of the dollhouse before you start painting.
Remove everything that moves!
I took out the three partition walls in my dollhouse as it was much easier to reach the back walls of the rooms without the partitions in the way. I also removed the two staircases and a small balustrade. If you have curtains, blinds, staircases or anything that moves in your dollhouse, take them out before you start.
Mask-up surfaces
Next, cover up anything you don’t want to get paint on with masking tape. I did a major error here as I didn’t do this at first as I thought I would have a steady enough hand to avoid getting paint on the ceiling. I made a total mess of it though and had to paint over the excess paint with white paint.
I didn’t bother putting masking tape on the walls that would be wallpapered as the wallpaper would cover this. But, bear in mind, if you’re using lightly coloured, or thin wallpaper (such as wallpaper printed on regular office paper), then the paint underneath may show through.
Choose your paint
Once you’re prepped, head down to your local DIY store for your paint. I’ve written an in-depth blog post about painting dollhouses which you can read here: What Paint Is Best For A Wooden Dollhouse? But for a quick overview, the best paint I found for a wooden dollhouse is chalk finish furniture paint, though this can be expensive. If you want a cheaper alternative, then emulsion (also known as latex paint in the USA) will work fine.
Apply multiple coats of paint
You’ll need at least a couple of coats of paint to get even coverage and I recommend using a small decorating paint brush, although mini rollers are available too. I didn’t bother with a mini roller as I wanted to keep things cheap and didn’t want to invest in a paintbrush and a roller. Some paint samples come with mini rollers attached which are very handy and you can use a small brush to cover any areas where the roller won’t reach.
The downside of using a brush is that the brush marks are visible unless you apply at least two or three coats of paint. But as you’ll only be painting a small area, this shouldn’t take too long. I used a Harris Easy Clean 0.5 paint brush from Homebase which cost £2.25 and it really is so easy to clean which means you can quickly switch between paint colours.
If the wallpaper in your dollhouse is in pretty good shape, you won’t need to strip it and can just paint over it instead! Find out the best way to do this in our blog Can You Paint Over Wallpaper In A Dollhouse?
How to wallpaper a dollhouse
I’ve written before about how to choose wallpaper for your dollhouse and how to apply the wallpaper in the post How To Wallpaper A Dollhouse: Tips For Easy Decorating and you can download my free printable wallpaper here. But here I wanted to share step-by-step how I wallpapered the dining room in my dollhouse.
Wallpapering a dollhouse dining room: step-by-step guide
I used this wallpaper from My Tiny World, which costs £2.50 for a sheet 304mm wide by 438mm long, and is printed on thick, fade and water resistant paper.
Although the sheets are large, I still needed two to cover the area I wanted to paper. But when the second sheet arrived, it was noticeably different in colour to the sheet I already had. I don’t know if this is because I ordered the sheets a few weeks apart so the design has changed, or if it’s just a printing error. Either way, I used both sheets of paper as I figured it wouldn’t be that noticeable once installed.
Step 1: I measured the height, depth and width of the room using a fabric tape measure and jotted down the measurements. I’ve found using a fabric tape measure is the easiest way to measure a room as rulers are either too long or too short to keep flat against the walls.
Once I had the measurements, I then cut out the back and side pieces of paper from my two sheets of wallpaper. I used a cutting board and a right angle ruler to do this. To make sure I got a straight line, I hooked the edge of the ruler on the edge of the cutting mat and made sure the wallpaper was lined up straight.
Step 2: I drew a pencil line for the area that needed cutting and then cut along this pencil line with a craft knife, pressing down hard with the knife as the paper was quite thick.
Step 3: Once I’d cut the wallpaper, I checked it fit by holding it in place and then trimmed a little more off the side as it was a tiny bit too long. Once I was happy it fit, I stuck the wallpaper in place with a glue stick. You could use craft glue, Mod Podge or even double sided sticky tape to stick the wallpaper down, but I’ve found a thin layer of glue stick glue works best.
The paint I used in the dining room is Elle Decor Enchanted Ivy which comes in a Flat Matt finish.
Wallpapering the dollhouse kitchen and living room
I used downloadable and printable wallpaper for the kitchen (you can download the same lemon design here). I designed this wallpaper in Canva and printed it on standard white card, using card is much better than printing on regular office paper as it’s thicker and less prone to wrinkling when sticking it down. The paint in the kitchen is Dulux Golden Sands with a matt finish, tester pots cost less than £2 so it’s a super cheap way to give your dollhouse a makeover.
The dining room (the room on the bottom left) has wallpaper from My Tiny World (see above for details).
The living room wallpaper was from Stick and Go Crafts and cost £3.99 a sheet. This is self-adhesive, so doesn’t require any glue to stick it down, just a steady hand and a ruler to smooth out any wrinkles or air bubbles. The paint I used for this room is Rust-Oleum Chalky Finish Furniture Paint in duck egg and was by far the easiest paint to apply from the ones I tried and it only needed two coats to completely cover the primer.
For the master bedroom, I didn’t use wallpaper, but instead cut a piece of table protector from Dunelm and used this on the wall. I originally intended to use this on the floor, but it looked better on the wall and after my carpet disaster (see below!) I had to use paper parquet flooring on the entire middle floor of the dollhouse. As the back of the table protector was fabric, I used a stray adhesive to attach this to the wall, rather than a glue stick.
The paint I used for the master bedroom is Mocha Pearl Effect semi-translucent paint by Craig and Rose, although it looks great, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this as it took about five coats to cover the walls properly.
How to fit flooring in a dollhouse
The easiest way to fit dollhouse flooring is to measure the floor area you want to cover and make a template out of card and then stick the flooring you’re using to this template, rather than sticking it directly onto the floor. The reason why is that it can be really difficult to remove flooring once it’s stuck down, particularly carpet.
I removed some old carpet from this dollhouse with a hair dryer and it took ages and was a hot and horrible task! If you need to do this in your dollhouse, check out my tutorial here.
Fitting carpet in the kids’ dollhouse bedroom
To make the template, measure the floor space and then draw this out on card. For the kids’ bedroom, which I used carpet, I taped two pieces of A4 card together to make the template. Once I’d done this, I checked the template was the right size by placing it in on the dollhouse and then used the template as a guide to cut the carpet. You’ll need a very sharp knife, or a combination of a sharp knife and scissors to do this.
For the kids’ room, I used this ice blue dollhouse carpet, which says it’s self adhesive, but I couldn’t get the backing off the carpet, so I just stuck it to the cardboard template with a glue stick instead!
I was really unsure about the colour of this carpet when it arrived but now it’s in place it really brightens the room up and goes well with the Craig & Rose 1829 Chalky Emulsion in Fresco Blue I used on the walls. You can buy samples of this paint from Homebase.
I did the same technique for the parquet flooring on the second floor, which is Streets Ahead flooring from The Dolls House Emporium for £2.20 for an A3 sheet. This flooring is a total bargain as it covered an entire floor of the dollhouse, but it’s quite thin, which is why I made a cardboard template for it to act as backing, rather than just sticking it directly onto the floor.
I did have some grey carpet for the living room, I made a template, cut the carpet out and went to fit it, only to realise that I’d cut the carpet upside down, meaning that the hole for the stairs was on the wrong side! This was a real rookie error and meant I wasted a £4 piece of carpet (it was this carpet from Melody Jane) and it was the carpet I bought to match the two grey stair runners too.
But I rectified the situation by using the sheet of parquet flooring across the entire room. I’d already cut this flooring for the master bedroom, so I had to patch it up by sticking the piece I’d cut to the template and matching the rest of the flooring up.
All in all it was a bit of a faff!
The flooring for the dining room is unfinished wood veneer from The Dolls House Emporium, which is self adhesive and comes in pre-cut planks, so you can peel the planks off and apply them directly to the floor. I didn’t do this as my dollhouse has a lip at the front, so I left the planks on the sheet, cut them to size and put them in the dollhouse. The lip at the front of the dollhouse holds the flooring in place without it slipping out.
This flooring was the most expensive (it cost £11.50) but it’s great quality and looks more high end than the paper flooring. It is quite thick though (about 2mm) so I needed to make sure I cut it so it wouldn’t go under the removable partition, otherwise the partition wouldn’t have fit back in the house.
I bought the flooring for the kitchen from Minimum World for about £4 and although it’s more expensive than the parquet flooring, the paper was much thicker and has a nice sheen to it which makes it look a little more luxurious.
For the bathroom I used a piece of non-slip drawer liner for the flooring from B&M, which cost £2.99 for the entire roll. If you’d like to find out more about what fabrics you can use for DIY dollhouse flooring, check out my blog post What To Use For Dollhouse Flooring: 6 DIY Hacks.
The paint for the bathroom is Rust-Oleum Painter’s Touch in Light Grey with a gloss finish. I bought a teeny pot of this from Homebase for £3 (for 20ml) and used more than half of it just to do the trim and to paint the partition wall, so if you’re covering a large area with this paint it could get expensive. As with the living room paint from Rust-Oleum, this grey paint was really easy to apply and only took a couple of coats, even though it’s not specifically wood paint, it covered the surface as well as the furniture paint.
Decorating this dollhouse took way longer than I thought it would, it’s now been sat on our dining table for a month while I’ve worked on it! It’s been a labour of love though and I’ve learnt so much from the experience. Now all I have to do is the stairs (which my father-in-law Neil is helping with) and then the outside and then the kids can finally play with it!!
Update: the stairs are now done and you can see how we did them in the blog post How To Make Dollhouse Stair Railings And Stair Rods.
I’ve also written about how to install different types of dollhouse flooring in the blog post How Do You Lay Dollhouse Floor?
