Indoor Birthday Scavenger Hunt [Printable Clues + Ideas] (2024)

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If you want to make someone’s birthday extra special this year, then here are our top tips for setting up a fun indoor birthday scavenger hunt.

We’ve also created some free printable clues for you, so all you’ve got to do is print them out, wrap your presents up and pop everything in place ready for the big day. Sound good? Let’s get started!

Birthday Scavenger Hunt Ideas

I remember the first time I took part in a birthday scavenger hunt. I was around six or seven and my family had painstakingly laid everything out the night before, so I could run around the house with pure excitement on my birthday. Finding a present in the washing machine was probably the most exciting part of the day, to be honest.

Fast forward a couple of decades later and it was my husband’s turn to set up a scavenger hunt for my birthday. His clues led me to gifts and oh-so-sweet love coupons all over the house and garden – and I was just as giddy with excitement again. It just goes to show that birthday treasure hunts aren’t just for kids!

There are various ways you can do an indoor birthday scavenger hunt.

You could attach your clues to gifts and hide them around the house, so whoever’s doing the scavenger hunt gets a gift every few minutes or so.

You could lead them around the house with just the clues and then have a “final reveal” at the end where the last clue leads to ALL the presents in one place.

You could do a mixture of the two.

Or you could even follow in Scott’s footsteps and lead someone to love coupons rather than gifts. Obviously, this one’s just for the adults!

You could even go for a themed scavenger hunt.

In this blog post, we’re going to take you through the steps needed for an indoor birthday scavenger hunt that has a mixture of clues and gifts dotted around the house for someone to find – and with a big and colourful birthday surprise at the end! Here’s how to do it…

Free Printable Scavenger Hunt Clues

First things first, print and cut out your clues!

To help save you some time, we’ve created some free printable scavenger hunt clues, which you can grab right now.

Our clues lead to various spots around the house and they should work for any home as they lead to common places like microwaves and bathrooms.

Here’s exactly where our clues lead to:

• A jewellery box or wherever you keep jewellery in your home. This is a great spot for hiding a small gift alongside another clue!
• Laundry basket or sock drawer. You could hide a clue or even a gift in here if there’s room.
• In a tree or even a birdhouse. This is another ideal spot for a small or lightweight gift or even a gift card! You could use your garden, but to keep your scavenger hunt indoors, you could hide a small gift and clue in a fake tree if you have one!
• Clock. They’re perfect for hiding clues behind them!
• Bathroom cupboard.
• Dining room chair. Keep the chair tucked in under the table and this becomes the perfect hiding spot for a slightly larger present!
• Inside the microwave.
• Inside the oven.
• Under or behind a laptop or computer.
• Under the sofa cushions. You could hide a clue or small gift here, or use your living room as a “final reveal” location like we did where lots more presents are found at the end!

We recommend writing on the back of each clue where it’s supposed to go, so setting up the scavenger hunt is super quick and easy for you.

Setting Up Your Birthday Scavenger Hunt

Up next… the fun part!

Decide which clues will lead to gifts and which ones will lead to just clues. We think it’s a nice idea to have a mix of small and big gifts to keep things balanced – and to keep the excitement flowing throughout the treasure hunt!

Also, choose which clue will be the first one. We’ve deliberately left the numbers on our printables blank so you can choose what order you want to do things in.

The first clue is what you’ll give them to start the treasure hunt. You could either just give it to them as is, pop it inside their birthday card or even attach it to a gift.

We rolled ours up and tucked it inside this cute teddy bear’s arms, which was also a gift in itself!

RELATED: 14 DIY Paper Anniversary Gifts To Make In A Weekend

Attach your clues to some gifts and then start placing everything around the house.

Keep things interesting by trying out lots of different hiding spots like inside cupboards, jewellery boxes, washing machines, on chairs… the whole house is your oyster.

You could even add some birthday balloons to some of the hiding spots to add that something extra and bring even more excitement to the treasure hunt!

Our friends over at KwinQwelo Party Decorations gifted us an awesome party pack so we could create this scavenger hunt. Sadly, these boxes are now showing as unavailable, so here’s something similar (sadly without the pretty marbled balloons from KwinQwelo’s kit).

Maybe you want to have balloons popping out of wardrobe doors when they’re opened?

Or sitting on top of clues in places like the laundry basket?

Or you could simply hang balloons throughout various rooms in the house to be found alongside the clues and gifts.

This kind of thing really adds an extra dose of birthday magic to the air!

If you want to follow in our footsteps, then why not also have the final clue lead to a room no one’s seen yet, which can act as a “grand reveal” location with yet more gifts to find?

Hang up some more balloons, maybe even add some birthday banners or bunting and watch their eyes light up as they go inside the room, which looks like a birthday bomb has gone off inside it!

Wondering why we’ve got some bunting arrows on the floor? Follow them and you’ll be exactly in the centre of all this birthday madness, which feels so immersive!

You could even hang some bunting lower down so they have to limbo under it to get their presents. It’s all a part of the silly birthday fun!

Final Thoughts

We hope you have fun with your indoor birthday scavenger hunt! Don’t forget to grab your free printable birthday scavenger hunt clues.

If you’re wondering where we got the fun balloons, bunting and banners that we used for our scavenger hunt, then they were from a company called KwinQwelo on Amazon. As of 2024, these boxes are sadly showing as unavailable. Here’s something similar instead.

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