Why Do Kids Always Draw On White Walls? A Teacher’s Observations And Simple Fixes
Last Tuesday, I turned away from wiping down the new block shelf in our preschool classroom for 12 whole minutes. The painters had left at 9 a.m., rolling fresh semi-gloss white on all the walls that had gotten scuffed and stained over last year. We’d hauled in new rugs, set out the brand-new crayon bin, unrolled a full stack of butcher paper on the art table, and put up all the usual alphabet posters and student art from last year on the back walls. When I turned around, there was Mia, four years old in sparkly pink rain boots even though it was sunny, pressing a bright blue crayon to the only completely blank stretch of white wall, right next to the block bin.
“What do you have going on there, Mia?” I asked. She stepped back, grinned, and held out her arms to show the whole two-foot long blue line running from her shoulder height down to the baseboard. “It’s a dinosaur tail,” she said. “He’s very big.”
She wasn’t even trying to hide it. Which got me thinking, because this isn’t the first time this has happened. Last spring, we touched up the hallway walls with fresh white paint, and three kids had drawn on it before nap time the same day. At home, when my oldest was three, he only ever drew on the plain white wall by the fridge; our dark blue accent wall stayed completely clean for years. My sister just repainted her living room white two months ago, and my three-year-old nephew drew a full family portrait on the blank stretch behind the couch before the paint fumes cleared. I genuinely think white walls attract kids. It’s not a coincidence, and it’s not always kids being naughty.
Ms. Rita, our lead teacher who’s been in this classroom for 30 years, just laughed when I pointed out Mia’s dinosaur and said she’s noticed this for decades. The house painter who did our classroom this summer even said the same thing: he’s painted hundreds of homes and schools, and the first wall that always gets marked up is the fresh blank white one. Never the colored walls, never the walls already covered in stuff.
So why is that? I’ve thought about this a lot, watching kids over the years, and it boils down to two simple things that make sense for how little kids develop. First, most of the art we give toddlers and preschoolers is too small. We hand them an 8×11 sheet of paper and expect them to fit the entire dinosaur, their whole family, or the big truck they saw on the way to school onto that little rectangle. But little kids don’t draw with their fingers and wrists yet – they draw with their whole arm, moving from their shoulder. They want to stretch out, make something big that fills up all the space they can reach. A blank white wall at kid height is exactly that space, perfectly sized for what they want to make.
Second, blank white is an invitation. All the other walls in most homes and classrooms are covered: posters, art, shelves, mirrors, decals. The only empty, completely unused space is that strip of blank white right where kids stand. Kids are wired to fill empty space; it’s how they play, how they make sense of the world, how they leave their mark. A big blank white wall might look clean and perfect to us, but to a kid, it looks like a blank canvas that’s just waiting for them.
I used to get frustrated when this happened, like most parents and teachers do. I’d think, we gave you paper, why do you have to break the rule and draw on the wall? I’d assume it was just testing boundaries, being naughty. But after seeing it happen so many times, I’ve changed how I handle it, and it’s cut down on unwanted wall drawing by 80% in our classroom, and it worked for my sister at home too.
The first thing we tried this year was just giving them what they’re already looking for. We had a big roll of heavy butcher paper left over from an art project, so we cut a 4×8 foot sheet and taped it right over that blank stretch of white wall, right at kid height. We wrote “Free Wall Art” at the top with a marker, and put a box of washable crayons right next to the block bin. That’s it. It took 10 minutes, and the roll of paper cost less than $5 at the dollar store. If you don’t have butcher paper, you can tape together leftover moving boxes for free, or buy a cheap peel-and-stick dry erase sheet if you want something reusable. If you don’t mind the occasional mark, you can even just leave a section of the white wall bare and tell kids it’s their drawing space, as long as they use washable markers. Most semi-gloss or gloss paint wipes clean with a wet paper towel in 30 seconds, no scrubbing needed.
If you really don’t want any drawing on your walls at all, the fix is just as simple: remove the blank white invitation. The only space kids draw on is blank white space between 2 and 4 feet off the ground – that’s the height they can reach while standing. Fill that space with something that’s not blank. Hang a big corkboard covered in their existing art, put up a row of low floating shelves with their stuffed animals or books, or add a big decal that covers the empty stretch. No blank white, no invitation to draw.
We’ve had our free art wall up for three weeks now. In that time, 14 different kids have drawn on it – everything from Mia’s multiple dinosaurs to a giant rainbow that takes up the whole top half to a dozen little handprints from the younger kids. No one has drawn on any other part of the fresh white walls. We still get the occasional stray mark, of course. Last Friday, someone drew a tiny red truck on the wall by the drinking fountain, right where the bulletin board ends. But that’s just kids being kids, right?
I still find it kind of funny, how that plain white draws them in every single time. But when you kneel down to their level and look at it, it makes sense. Most of the world is too big for them, too full of rules and things they can’t touch. That little strip of blank white is one of the only things that looks like it’s just waiting for them to put something there. It’s not that they want to make a mess. It’s just that it’s there. And so far, giving them their own strip has worked pretty well. I don’t expect it to stop every stray mark, but it’s a whole lot easier than repainting every few months.
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