RV Decorating Ideas for Outside Worth Saving
Our site at Cedar Hollow was site 14, gravel, slightly tilted, the kind where your coffee slides if you set it on the picnic table wrong. From the road it looked like every other rig. Then my daughter staked a wind spinner by the steps and suddenly two kids wandered over to ask about it. That is the whole trick. The inside is for you. The outside is the handshake.
I used to think exterior camper decor was just clutter you had to pack back up. Then I did a season of it. Awning lights, a patio mat that hides the gravel, a couple of garden flags by the door, a little sign that tells people which spot is ours when they come back from the bathhouse in the dark. It is the difference between a parking spot and a campsite.
Most of what I use down here started as a digital file I printed or cut myself, a lot of them off an indie design shop, because buying ten finished metal signs gets expensive fast and half of them rust by August anyway. Quick heads up, some of the links below are affiliate ones, so if you grab a file I get a tiny cut. Costs you nothing extra.
The Spinner That Made Cars Actually Slow Down
Site loops are full of people doing 15 in a 5. The first thing I staked at the edge of our pad at Cedar Hollow was this Drive Slow wind spinner, and I am not kidding, a guy in a dually actually braked. Whether it was the spinner or the dog in the road I cannot prove. I take the win.
The file is the design itself. I had mine cut on aluminum at a local sign shop for around eleven bucks, then mounted it on a $4 spinner base from the hardware store. Catches afternoon wind, goes still at dawn. My one gripe. The first base I bought had a cheap plastic swivel that seized up after two rainy days. Get the metal-bearing kind.
I pack it flat, blade off the post, wrapped in a dish towel. Takes up zero room.
Coffee Mug Art For The One Sign Everyone Reads
Not everything outside has to be weatherproof metal. This camping coffee mug clipart became the little wood sign I hung by our awning pole that says morning people welcome after 9. Printed it at the library, mod-podged it onto a scrap of pallet board my neighbor was tossing.
The set gave me a few mug variations, so I sized one up for the sign and kept a tiny one for the cooler lid. Reads great from a folding chair eight feet away.
Nitpick. The print fades if it sits in full sun all day, learned that the hard way by week three. I hang it on the shady side of the rig now or seal it heavier. Two coats minimum.
A Garden Flag That Tells The Neighbors Who Runs This Camp
My sister claimed this one the second she saw it. The Camping Lady garden flag went on a $6 metal flag stand right next to her step at our Big Pine trip, and it basically announced she was in charge of the s’mores. She was.
I print these designs on outdoor fabric sheets, the kind you run through an inkjet, then hem the top with iron-on tape for the rod pocket. Sounds fussy. Takes ten minutes once you have done one.
The catch with any fabric flag. It curls and looks sad in dead-still air. A breeze fixes it. Our spot had none the first morning so it just hung there limp until lunch.
A Quote Print For The Bare Spot By The Door
There is always one blank patch next to the camper door that needs something. This camper quote filled mine. I printed it on cardstock, slid it into a $3 clear acrylic frame, and stuck it to the door panel with two strips of outdoor velcro so it does not rattle off on the highway.
The file works small or big. I did a postcard size for the door and a bigger version for inside over the dinette, same design, ties the two together without me thinking too hard about it.
One thing. Cardstock by itself warps in humidity. The frame solved it. Before the frame, my first print buckled like a potato chip after one dewy night.
The Welcome Flag That Saved Me From Giving Directions
When we did a group weekend at Sawtooth, eleven rigs deep, nobody could find our spot. So now the Welcome to Our Campsite garden flag goes up first, before the chairs, before anything. It is the lighthouse. Friends spot it from the loop road and stop circling.
I printed two of this design. One stays on the stand by the fire ring, the backup lives in the door pocket because flags walk off or blow into the woods. Ask me how I know.
Gripe. The lighter-colored sections show campfire smudge fast. I rinse it in a bucket with a splash of dish soap and it comes back. Mostly.
A Second Spinner Just For The Sound Of It
Two spinners is not overkill, fight me. The Camping Life wind spinner hangs off our awning arm where the Drive Slow one stakes in the dirt, and the two of them turning at different speeds is weirdly nice to watch with a beer at 7pm.
Same deal as the first. The design file, cut on metal, hung on a cheap swivel hook from the camping aisle. I did this one in a coppery finish so the late light catches it.
Honest downside. Hung from the awning, it clanks against the pole in real wind and will absolutely wake you. I move it to a stake on gusty nights now. Learned that around 2am at Cedar Hollow.
Sunset Lake Scene For The Big Cooler Everyone Sees
This sunset lake scene SVG is the one I cut as vinyl, not paper. Stuck it on the lid of our big white cooler, the one that lives outside under the awning all weekend and gets photographed more than the rig does.
The SVG cut clean on my old Cricut, layered the camper over the lake colors. I weeded it on the dinette table the night before we left, peeled the transfer tape, smoothed it onto the cooler with a credit card.
My nitpick. I rushed the weeding and left a tiny stray dot in the sky that drove me nuts all trip. Go slow on the small bits. The cooler vinyl itself held up through a whole summer of sunscreen hands.
The Funny Flag That Starts Conversations At The Bathhouse
A camp mom three sites over walked our whole loop just to read this one. The funny camping garden flag is the icebreaker of the bunch. It went on the stand by our fire pit at Maple Bend and got more comments than the actual fire.
I print these on the inkjet fabric sheets too. This design has a lot of white background, so I bumped the print quality up a notch so the joke stays crisp from the road.
The downside of funny. Read it twice before you print it big. The first design I almost picked had a typo I did not catch until it was on the stand, which is its own kind of funny, just not on purpose.
Drive Slow As A Flag When You Are Out Of Spinner Room
Some sites are too cramped to stake a spinner near the road. Our spot at Sawtooth was one of them, narrow, neighbor practically in my lap. So the Drive Slow message became a garden flag instead, planted right at the edge of the gravel where cars roll in.
Same file family as the spinner version, so the two match if you run both. I printed this one and clipped it to the same $6 stand I use for everything. Swap flags in ten seconds.
Nitpick. A flag does not spin, obviously, so it reads less from a moving car than the spinner does. It works best on the slow inner loops, not the entrance road.
Live Love Camp For The Doormat Nobody Wipes Their Feet On
I ironed this Live Love Camp camper design onto a plain $7 coir doormat for the bottom of our steps. Does anyone wipe their feet? No. Does it look great in every single photo of the steps? Yes. That is the job.
The design came through clean for heat transfer. I cut it as HTV, pressed it with a household iron and a tea towel over the top because I do not haul a heat press to the woods. Pressed it right on the picnic table.
One real issue. Coir is bumpy, so the iron does not press evenly and a couple of letter edges lifted after a month of boots. I went back over them with more heat and pressure. Mostly holding now.
Camping Queen Floral For The Folding Sign By Her Chair
My sister, again, the camping queen of the family, gets this one. The Camping Queen floral RV design went onto a little A-frame chalkboard-style sign that sits beside her camp chair like a nameplate. Petty? Yes. Loved? Also yes.
I printed the floral design, trimmed it, and decoupaged it onto the flat sign face. The flowers give it color outside without me planting anything I would just forget to water.
Downside. Anything propped on the ground gets knocked by the dog roughly hourly. I added a tent stake through the base frame to anchor it after the third faceplant into the dirt.
Camp Life Tee That Doubles As Walking Decor
Hear me out. The best exterior camper decor walks around the site, and that is the Camp Life camper t-shirt. I pressed this design onto a $4 thrifted tee and wore it the whole Big Pine weekend, so half my campsite photos have the branding in them by accident.
It is built for shirts, so it cut clean as iron-on and pressed easy with the tea-towel-and-iron method on the dinette. Did a kid-size one too for my daughter so we matched, which she tolerated for exactly one day.
My nitpick. I peeled the transfer tape while it was still warm the first time and lifted half a letter. Wait until it is fully cool. Patience, which I do not have at 11pm packing.
Frequently Asked Questions
What kind of paint do you use on rv walls?
Honestly? A camp mom asked me this exact thing at Maple Bend while I was hanging a sign. I redid our camper’s interior walls with a water-based acrylic latex meant for cabinets and trim, the satin kind, because RV walls are usually that slick fake-wood vinyl and flat wall paint slides right off.
The part that actually mattered was the primer under it. I used a bonding primer made for glossy surfaces. Skipped it on one cupboard to save time and the paint scratched off with a fingernail. Did the rest properly. Big difference.
Can you paint rv walls?
Yep, you can. I spent a long January doing exactly that to our 2008 camper and it is the cheapest way to stop the place looking like 2008.
The trick is prep, not paint. Clean the grease off, scuff-sand the shiny vinyl panels lightly, prime, then two thin coats. I rushed one wall with one thick coat and it stayed tacky for days and showed every roller mark. Thin coats. Be patient even when you are not.
Can you put wallpaper on rv walls?
Short answer, yes, and peel-and-stick is the move for a camper. I did a backsplash strip behind our little stove with the removable kind so I can pull it off when we sell.
Clean the wall first or it will not grab. The one spot I stuck it over a slightly greasy patch near the cooktop started lifting at the corner within a week. Peel that bit, wipe it down, restick. On clean panel it has held a full year of road bumps.
Can you paint over rv walls?
You can paint right over the existing RV wall panels, I did, no need to rip anything out. That faux-wood vinyl takes paint fine once it is prepped.
The only spot I would not just paint over is anything peeling or bubbling already, because the new paint will not fix a bad surface, it just rides along with it. I cut out one bubbled section near a window leak and patched it before painting. Painting over the bubble would have looked rough by spring.
Before You Pack Up
We pulled out of Cedar Hollow on a Sunday and it took me twenty minutes just to gather the outside stuff. Spinner off the post, flags off the stands, doormat shaken out, cooler vinyl staying right where it is. The site went back to being plain gravel the second the flag came down.
Start with one thing by the door. A flag or a spinner or a little sign that says which spot is yours. Print it, stake it, see who wanders over. Last trip it was two kids and a guy in a dually asking where I got the spinner.
More Camping Ideas We Love
Heads up: some links in this post are affiliate links. If you grab a file we love, we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. We only feature designs we would happily pack on our own trip.
