If you’re having trouble coming up with a good theme for a boy’s bedroom, take a clue from the comics. With their bright strong-contrast colors and powerful graphics they can quickly turn a room into an attention-grabber. Let’s take a look at how this room became a comic-book lover’s dream with very little effort or cost.

Bedding: Children can shift interests often, so it’s smart to choose lower-cost theme items for their bedrooms, allowing you to change things out in a few years as their tastes evolve. Bedding is one of the quickest and easiest ways to make a change. A bedspread, shams and a throw pillow start the theme off with recognizable yet relatively generic comic-book images such as stars and lightning bolts. The black European shams on the bed work well with the look yet can be recycled when your child moves on to other interests.

Paint: The red stripe on the wall behind the bed does double duty. It operates as a visual headboard and it dramatically links all the vivid elements together with their common red theme. This is also an easy-to-replace choice. Simply paint the wide stripe in another color or paint the entire wall.

Art: If you have a talented artist in the family, then you can have them create images like these on blank canvases with acrylic paint. If not, look for the right art in comic book stores and poster shops. You might even want to frame some favorite comic book covers or pictures of heroes to personalize the room.

This is a fun theme, so have fun with it. You could add shelves for action figures or table space for piles of comics. This could be your comic-loving child’s best dream come true!