Creative DIY Escape Room Ideas, Your Kids Will Love

Are you stuck at home with the kids and looking for something fun to do? Why not build your own escape room? With some creativity, you can put together an escape room experience that’s both challenging and fun. Not sure where to start? I’ve got you covered with some creative DIY escape room ideas your kids will love.

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Escape Game Idea: The Treasure Hunt

For this escape room idea, you’ll need to hide a series of clues around the house. The first clue should lead to the second clue, and so on, until the final clue leads to the treasure. Treasure can be anything from a special treat to a prize from the dollar store. This is the simplest way to plan an escape.

To turn your treasure hunt into an escape, you can add a time limit on how long the players have to find the treasure. At each location, hide the clues, not just place them easily for players to find. I turn all my treasure hunts into escape rooms by turning my clues into puzzles and locking one or two inside locked boxes. Let’s face it, kids love finding treasure.

For your puzzles, don’t overthink them. A cheap jigsaw puzzle from the dollar/pound store or a cut-up picture will do the trick. Write your clue right onto the jigsaw. If you have time, you could take a photograph of where the next location is and use that as a puzzle. The clue is revealed when the players have assembled the puzzle, and they can head to the next treasure hunt location. You can use any theme for a treasure hunt escape. In conclusion, treasure hunts are so easy to set up and plan.

Escape Game Idea: Jelly Bean Lock Code

Now I used this lock idea in my wizard escape room for my daughter’s birthday. In the Harry Potter films, there are candies called every flavour jelly beans. So this puzzle fit well with my wizard theme; you can use regular jelly beans for this clue idea. Lock up a clue or puzzle inside a box with a number lock. 3-4 lock code combinations are cheap and easy to get hold of you probably have some lying around at home already.

Lock your puzzle up; let’s say your lock code is 846. Place 8 green jelly beans, 4 orange jelly beans and 6 yellow jelly beans in a dish. The players will need sort and count these to reveal the code to open the lock. You will need to include a clue to tell players the order the numbers are in. I made a printable showing three different jelly beans, I attached the picture to my locked box and it worked a treat. You could use a piece of paper and just use pens/crayons to draw blobs of colour (highly technical term BLOB lol). Adding sweets like this is a lot of fun as the kids get to eat them after they have opened up the box. You can do the same idea using any object that can be counted and sorted, lego bricks are a great alternative option to sweets.

If you like this idea you can grab my free printable from my fun lock kit ideas post. You can use it to help you set up this puzzle. FIND IT HERE.

Escape Room Idea: The Wizard’s Challenge

Calling all Harry Potter fans! In this creative DIY escape room idea, your kids need to use their magic powers to complete a series of tasks. Have players collect ingredients to create a potion to save their friend who has been cursed. You can make potions using ingredients like food colouring, vinegar, and baking soda. Hide the ingredients around the game room, lock them inside boxes and have the players solve puzzles to find everything they need. Be sure to add plenty of props to bring the experience to life. Wands, robes, and cauldrons are all great choices.

My favourite creative escape room idea is to use these frixion pens. They are great for revealing hidden messages and add a bit of theatrics by revealing the message with heat. I used a lighter in the video, but you could also use a hair dryer for younger kids. This would be a great addition to a wizard-themed game, create your message on vintage looking paper and make it look like a mystical spell written in an ancient language.

included UV And blacklight

Another creative DIY escape room ideas is to use UV pens! They are a lot of fun and easy to make puzzles. use them to make hidden messages to help solve clues. Kids love discovering hidden elements; using blacklight is a great way to easily add this to your game. You could grab a small blacklight torch and disguise it as a wand to reveal the message. Ultimately you can combine blacklight with other puzzles to add another layer of discovery. Grab a cheap dollar/pound store jigsaw puzzle and, using a UV pen, write a clue onto the completed puzzle. As a result, when the puzzle is assembled, and they have used the blacklight, the hidden clue is revealed.

This is an idea I used in one of my daughter’s birthday party escapes. I purchased a cheap 50-piece puzzle (so it didn’t take long to solve) and removed one piece. I tied that puzzle piece to the blacklight torch and placed it in the room for the players to find. This was a nice easy puzzle to set up, and the players easily figured out that they needed to use the torch with the puzzle.

Escape Room Idea: The Spy Game

Turn your living room into a top-secret headquarters, and let your kids use their detective skills to solve a series of clues. For added difficulty, you can incorporate cyphers or encryption into your clues. Not sure how to get started? Check out this great book from Usborne. It has a collection of 50 different secret codes that you can include in your game. AVAILABLE ON AMAZON

Here is a list of secret codes that you could include in your spy game for clues.

• Pig-Pen code
• Morse code
• Braille
• Reverse Alphabet so a=z b=y c=x etc
• Number Substitution a=1 b=2 c=3
• Picture substitution. Each letter of the alphabet is a different picture.
• Semaphore
• Hieroglyphs

Some fun ideas for your spy theme include that the spy headquarters has been infiltrated by a mole, and the players must discover who the mole is. Have the players find and disarm bombs planted by an evil mastermind who set out to destroy the spy agency. Place clues inside black balloons (bombs) and have them pop them to reveal the clues inside. I use this idea A LOT. I write my clue using one of the cyphers and cut it up into 5-8 pieces and place each piece inside the balloon. Once all the balloons are popped, they can assemble the message and then have to decode it to reveal their clue.

Grab the spy code kit shown above from my Etsy shop, use it to create cryptic notes and clues, the spy kit will make creating your secret messages so easy. In addition, I have a free spy hand scanner prop you can use. My kids and their friends LOVED this. Read all about the free printable here and grab the hand scanner prop it is a really fun addition to a spy-themed game.

No spy theme would be complete without disguises, so have some fake moustaches, hats, wigs and a collection of sunglasses on hand so the kids can get into character. This is a great activity to do if you are playing the escape game as part of a party activity. As a result, the children can get into character and immerse themselves into the game.

Finally, other activities you can do are to have them take their fingerprints and do some basic spy training. Have the players practice some of the secret codes you have used in the game. You can call it spy training and tell them they will need to use their new spy skill in the game they are about to play.

Simple Ideas To Include in Your DIY escape room

• Jigsaw Puzzles.
• Mazes.
• Wordsearches.
• Overlay puzzles.
• Invisible ink messages.
• A message written on the side of a pack of playing cards.
• Sorting objects into size order or groups to reveal messages.
• Collecting items from a list. Each item has a clue attached to it.
• Hide objects in odd places, inside hallowed out books, the back of picture frames tapped to the underside of a table etc.
• Place clues inside balloons.
• Hide clues in plain sight, place them inside picture frames, pin them to notice boards or attach them to the fridge with magnets.
• Rebus (these are a lot of fun to make)

I would not recommend choosing riddles and clues that are too cryptic or hiding things in places that are difficult to get to. NEVER use electrical outlets for clues. As a family, we went to an escape room in Dubai, the game was supposedly suitable for young players, and they hid the final key inside an electrical socket!!!! We couldn’t believe how irresponsible it was to allow kids to pull open a socket to retrieve a key. So, it was a fake outlet, but there was no way I was letting my kids touch it. Needless to say, we didn’t escape!

Conclusion:

Building your own escape room is a great way to spend an afternoon with the kids. Grab the opportunity to bond and have some quality family time. What are you waiting for? Get planning! And if you need more inspiration, go check out our Pinterest boards for more Creative DIY Escape Room Ideas. With just a little bit of creativity (and some household objects), you can turn your living room into an exciting escape room that your whole family will enjoy. These DIY escape room ideas are perfect for rainy days, birthday parties, sleepovers—or any time you’re looking for some fun!

If you are looking for a done-for-you games that takes out all of the preparation, head over to my Etsy shop where I have a whole host of fun escape room kits to choose from.