Rooms For Little Monsters

Decorating the kid’s bedrooms is one of the greatest undertakings an amateur home decorator will ever embark on. If you thought the arguments over the fitted kitchen were testing, you haven’t seen anything yet! Your daughter wants a pink palace for perfect princess but your son wants a miniature football stadium covered in camouflage and they both have enough toys and outfits to fill a wagon! Feeling tense? 

The first thing to do is involve your children in the decision making process. Ask them about less specific things like their favourite hobbies, colours and objects. Introduce them to compromise by asking them the top five or six things (within the realms of possibility) that they might like in their rooms, then asking which they would like most if they could only have one or two. If you lay down the ground rules early and dispel any false hopes, you will in the long run avoid any disappointment.

Once you have finished your meeting with your little visionaries, it is time to get practical. Take a look at their things and take into account how fast they are growing and from here deduce how much storage you will actually need. A bed and a wardrobe will obviously be the first things on your list, but you may also want to include a book shelf, a toy chest, storage for out of season clothes and perhaps a desk and wall space for certificates (to avoid putting any undue pressure on your children it is best not to tell them what this space is for!). When purchasing any furniture it is advisable to take more time than you usually might to do a safety check, taking into account flammability and small parts. Choose a roller blind over curtains for added safety. They are extremely easy to fit and available in any colour your child could imagine.

When deciding on coverings for the walls you should take into account how hardy and how repairable a material is. Wallpaper may look pretty but it is close to impossible to cover areas of graffiti without repapering whole areas. A better solution may be paint. It won’t rip and if you keep a tin of the same colour in a cupboard nearby, and marks that may appear can be quickly covered. If your children are likely to cover your painted walls in hand prints anyway, perhaps you could incorporate this into the initial design. Not only will this mask any future prints, your children will love being so closely involved with the decorating.

Similar consideration is needed for the flooring. Though a hard wearing surface like a wooden floor no doubt going to stand up to more of a battering, it is more of a hazard than a soft carpet. It is best to choose a darker shade for the carpeting to hide any muddy footprints. Even better would be a patterned style- which your children will most probably prefer anyway.

Try to keep the themes for the rooms quite loose and avoid being to specific with characters or cartoons as children are nothing if not fickle! If a child insists on including their favourite character, bedding and soft furnishings are the best way to do it as they can easily be replaced.

Success in decorating the perfect bedroom for your children does not depend on spending large amounts of money. A little imagination is all that is needed. Have some fun. It is certainly the only room you will ever paint lime green with orange spots and receive resoundingly positive feedback!