Does your classroom aesthetic really matter?

Do decorations impact learning?

(Plus, 5 tips to help you create the best environment for students)

The summer before my first year of teaching, I spent hours in an unairconditioned classroom painting, organizing my classroom library, and pasting book pages to my cabinets (all while sweating through my top bun). This was a labor of love, and for me (an English teacher with a love for aesthetics), it was mostly love.

It was always interesting to me to see how my teammates and coworkers decorated their classrooms. For the most part, you could walk into any one person’s room and get an idea of who they were, their philosophy on teaching, and their organizational strategies.

While I love a well-decorated classroom, natural lighting, and student art on every wall, I’ve always wondered how much it really matters. After all, teachers who were much more skilled than I cultivated excellent classroom relationships with the bare minimum of classroom decor.

If you’re curious about whether your classroom decor makes an impact on your students, you’re not alone. Turns out, there’s a lot of research about the best classrooms and how they impact student learning, engagement, and morale.

If you’d like to get the most bang for your buck in terms of the way your classroom looks and feels, this article will also include 5 quick tips to improve your classroom aesthetics. Before we start though, just know that your care and attention to your students will always be the most important factor in their learning and engagement! These tips are for anyone who needs guidance on classroom decor and are definitely not meant to make you second guess your second home at school.

Now, let's get into the research.

It is possible to overdecorate

One study by Carnegie Mellon found that very young students were distracted by highly decorated classrooms.

There are several asterisks next to this, including the fact that the children in the study were quite young. Another is that the study’s writers personally admitted that more research needs to be done about this effect, and teachers should by no means take their decorations down completely in an attempt to narrow their students’ focus.

Another resource cites a study from Cognitive Science, which found that students get used to highly stimulating classrooms in controlled environments but that the distraction level is never quite zero in real classrooms. Their interpretation of this research was that students only have limited resources to contribute to attention, and visual stimulation steals some of these resources and redistributes them to the decorations.

If you already have problems with distractible students, this could be an issue! So, how do you avoid “overdecorating?”

Tip #1: Use informational decor more sparingly

We know. Charts, reminders, sight words–these kinds of decor are essential for classrooms of students who need repeated exposure to certain learning materials. Keep your alphabet posters! Don’t tear down your periodic table!

However, if you make a new poster for every lesson that your students learn, it may be time to swap out old materials for the new. Decide which informational decorations are necessary and which can go into a handout for students to refer to when they need it.

These kinds of decorations will require a lot more attention than simple decorations such as plants, color palettes, and painted walls. Students not only have to read and process the information when they look at it, but they may also find themselves searching the walls for information when they feel stuck, rather than focusing on their metacognition.

Adequate facilities for learning are the most important thing

This will come as no surprise, but classrooms that are poorly lit, uncomfortable, or noisy result in poor learning outcomes for students. This can be especially difficult to combat if you're one of many teachers who deal with "old building" problems on the daily.

When making choices about classroom decor to benefit learning, you may want to pay special attention to lighting, heat-dampening curtains, or even insulating door jambs. These small but essential elements can have a huge payoff for student well-being, attention, and long-term success.

Tip #2: Make sure the essentials are in place

Classrooms that are dark, too bright, hot, cold, or noisy will already distract students. Adding decorations around the room may compound an attention deficit when students have fewer resources to devote to learning due to discomfort.

So, get your essentials in place as a priority:

• Add lamps where overhead lighting is insufficient
• Ask students whether they prefer fluorescent lighting or natural light, being sure to eliminate distracting screen glare if you opt for natural lighting
• Do what you can to regulate temperature, including adjusting thermostats where possible, letting in outside air, turning on fans, or even purchasing blackout curtains to curb some of the afternoon sunlight
• Stagnant air can also be a factor in student discomfort, so circulating air with fans and air purifiers keeps the air feeling and smelling clean
• Look into decorations that dampen sound, such as rugs, curtains, wall panels, or padded furniture
• While this isn’t decorative, it may be helpful to look into tools that amplify your voice or block out competing sounds for students who have sound sensitivities

Obviously, it’s not your job to “fix” the facilities you teach in and sometimes, no amount of bringing complaints up the chain will fix the problem. However, if you can advocate for yourself, definitely talk to an administrator to get some help and fill out maintenance requests where you can. If it's not in your power to fix these problems, maybe your students can help. Encourage them to bring handfans, bottled water, or even noise-dampening headphones for focus time. Help them regulate themselves with tools they can bring from home.

Even the arrangement of your furniture impacts the student

There are a lot of studies on how the arrangement of classrooms impacts student learning, performance, and well-being. Long story short: each seating arrangement conveys a message to students about what they can expect in the classroom environment.

There are several different ways to arrange a classroom, each with its own drawbacks and benefits, but more generally, the way your furniture is arranged can convey a message that you don’t even know you’re sending.

Spaced-out seating may create a quieter learning environment, but it may also create an atmosphere that makes students less likely to interact with each other or the teacher (Education). However, some students perform better in certain kinds of tasks, especially thought-heavy, logical tasks, when isolated from other students (National Institute of Health). 

So, what’s the lesson here? Your desks set the tone for what students can expect while also impacting individual students in sometimes unexpected ways.

Tip #3: Be flexible with your seating arrangements

Most researchers agree that your seating arrangements should reflect the activity and expectations of the day. While too much variation can create a sense of instability (for both you and the student), purposeful changes and rearrangements can allow students to adjust their thinking and expectations so they can perform new tasks in the right environment.

Some teachers don’t have the luxury of frequent seating changes. However, creating a floor plan that allows students to choose their preferred environment may help them create the calm, focused, and welcoming environment they need.

If your students can handle mixed seating, consider keeping some desks separated and single-file, some grouped, and some with single-partner seating. More comfortable seating options are also a huge bonus. If you have increased demand for a certain kind of seating, then change and adapt as needed!  

Your decorations can make students feel more welcome

Research shows that even small things like how "manly" the decorations are can impact student performance. One study found that women performed poorly compared to their male counterparts when photos of only men were present during graded speeches. Another found that decor perceived as highly masculine diminished female students’ career aspirations (Education).

Your classroom decorations can impact whether or not students feel that they belong in a space. However, rather than creating highly specific environments (such as a highly feminine or culturally specific space), research shows that positive imagery (such as nature-themed visuals) not associated with anything or anyone in particular can neutralize an environment and create belonging that positively impacts performance and well-being for all students.

It’s important to avoid stereotyping students or creating “token” symbols that may come across as disingenuous; however, if you’re going to put pictures up of influential people, definitely include remarkable women, Indigenous people, and people of color. When these students see themselves represented in the classroom, they perform better, are more engaged, and are more likely to prioritize academics (Education).

Tip #4: Be mindful of “thematic” decorations that may make some students feel excluded

While it can make some students feel unwelcome to be surrounded by decorations that aren't representative of them, it’s also possible to overcompensate and accidentally exclude the majority group of students by narrowing your decorative focus to certain student groups.

According to these studies, avoiding highly “thematic” decorations and sticking to neutral, positive imagery can boost learning and engagement across the board. When possible, don’t skimp on representation for minority groups, and don’t be afraid to add to your decor as you learn more about your students, their interests, and their talents. Displaying student work is a tried-and-true tactic for making students feel welcomed and included.

Color is important…in moderation

Just like you can overdecorate a room, you can put too much or too little color in your room. In a study from Building and Environment, the study's authors referred to these results as “curvilinear.” Essentially, too little color isn’t great for stimulation, but neither is too much color.

There are several things you can do to create the best balance of color, and the best results might be different for the age group you’re teaching, but this last tip is supported by research.

Tip #5: Save money on paint and splurge on pops of color

The best balance of color and stimulation levels according to research? White walls with pops of color. Classrooms with plain walls and brightly-colored furniture, decorations, and carpets had the best results for student progress!

It’s crazy, isn’t it? Students in this kind of environment actually made better progress than their peers.

This balance of color seems like the best of all worlds. Not only can you save your favorite T-shirt from paint stains and reduce your decorating time by about 10 hours, but you can also save your money and your wall space for little pops of color that add just the right amount of stimulation to your room.

Blank rooms with student artwork help students perform well and feel welcomed

We know that if you’re decorating your classroom, you’re probably doing it with your own money. We don’t want this article to discourage you if you can’t achieve your best and wildest classroom dreams this year. Just so you know, blank rooms are still more highly correlated with student success than overdecorated rooms. Plus, you can get free decorations from a highly creative, highly motivated group of students.

Seeing their decorations in your classroom makes a huge difference in a student’s sense of belonging in your room. Outsource your decorations to the students, and you’ll positively influence their well-being and their learning progress this school year.

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