Save Your Home With The Perfect Playroom

Save Your Home With The Perfect Playroom

Having a playroom, you know, that little place in your house where your children can be the instruction-ignoring-creative-destroyers they were born to be, is one of the best decisions you can ever have. It doesn’t matter whether you decide to give up the living room, reimagine the spare room, the attic, or the basement, or maybe even go with a purpose-built perfect garden house for them to be let loose in. Where doesn’t matter so much as the fact you do.

It will become that space to keep their toys, and dedicate ‘their stuff’ too, let them get paint everywhere and collapse in front of another Disney film that is designed specifically for kids who don’t like to sit still. But just going in blind, shooting from the hip and without any thought as to what makes a great play room.

As such, we have come up with a few bits of advice – some tips and tricks – on how to create the perfect space in what will become, let’s be honest, the most important room in your home. Forget the kitchen, the living or dining room; if you get this one right, the search for a peace and pleasant home will become much easier. This, the perfect play room, well, it is nothing short of being the key to a wonderfully happy home.

• Always Choose Hard Flooring

If you are thinking about giving up your carpeted living room to make space for a playroom, think again. You need a room with hard floors. You need somewhere with wooden floorboards, or tiles, just to make your life that much easier. You see kids get messy. They will live muddy footprints everywhere, they will through paint and paint the floors, and they will stamp Playdoh into it. Hard flooring is just easier to clean. It is easier to sweep up the mess and easier to wipe clean. It is the answer to no fuss clean up operations. That doesn’t mean you can’t soften the look, or even the landing, with a nice soft and colourful rug. In fact, we would urge you too. It’ll just be a nice place for them to lie down when it all gets too much.

• Think About The Furniture

This is an important consideration for oh so many reasons. First o   ff, you need to consider their needs and their age and all that sort of stuff. If they are young and still prone to enjoying an afternoon nap then make sure they have somewhere nice and comfy they can curl up. If they are a little bit older and determined not to sleep anymore then you will want somewhere that they will put their feet up, kick back and relax, maybe with a book or an iPad. So comfort is definitely a requirement, but not the whole story. You need to think about wipe clean. As such, always opt for furniture with leather upholstery or a fabric sofa that has a protector on it. This is to protect it from the inevitable like milk spills, melted chocolate stains, paint splashes, filthy hands and whatever else.

• Get The Lighting Right

Okay, kids go through different moods and it is kind of important you have everything it takes to match that mood. You’ll really want to have some stuff in your arsenal to create the perfect atmosphere. So, get yourself some Montgomery curtains to cover your windows and then swap out the normal light switch for a dimmer switch. There will be times when they are painting and they’ll want to have the best natural light possible (how could they hope to be budding artists without natural light) and there will be times when you need to dim the lights down – not off – while you put on a little Disney film for your Disney prince and princess. It will also allow you to sort of, well, encourage your little one to take a nap when you know they are getting tired. Just pop them in the playroom and then slowly dim the lights. The more scenarios you are prepared for the better. Simple.

• Create A Soft Spot For Them

Cover the floors and corners with soft furnishings, make them that little area in the playroom that is a soft area. This will have a ton of benefits. Firstly, it will allow them somewhere to crash out on or loll around on, that something unique that the other rooms don’t have. That will be a real asset in keeping them there. The more fun the more used. Then there is the fact things like bean bags and oversized cushions can be used in games conjured up by their imagination, used for making forts and castles and dens and whatnot. They will also be able to double up as sleeping quarters for when it is your turn to host a sleepover. The list of wonders that can blossom from something as simple as fabric stuffed with polyester balls is surprisingly endless. Trust us on that one. What’s more, you can just pile them up in a corner – or behind the sofa – when they’re not being used.

• Think About The Walls

The walls pose an opportunity to make this room distinctly different from the others in your house because you can give them some serious personality. Get some wallpaper that depicts some adventure scene like pirates landing on a desert island, or a fairy kingdom or anything that your kid is into. Perhaps you could even make it slightly educational by having a world map across the wall, maybe even one that shows where certain wildlife reside, or some fun art with fun facts. The choice is completely up to you, well, not completely because your kid is no doubt going to hold mega-sway. Alternatively, why not go all personal? Why not get a mural wallpaper made up out of your family photographs? That would be gorgeous and lovely and magical and special. It could even be that you get the paints out and let them decorate with their hands, or get an artsy professional in, someone good at making walls magical by painting big old bumblebees across the wall or anything you fancy really.

• Small Scale Furniture

So the thing that makes this a kids room is the fact that everything is the perfect size for a kid, so embody and embrace that fact. Have a small table with small chairs that they can huddle around to perform their arts and crafts ritual. It will stop them having to climb up onto high adult-sized furniture, or scramble across wide tables to reach whatever it is they want to reach. But that isn’t all. By having small furniture you are making a statement that says this is their room and they will love you for it. It will feel like it is theirs. Of course, you can go one step further and bring them into the whole design process. Ask them what they want to go into their playroom and then get them to paint the different bits of furniture. Multi-coloured chairs and painted handprints on the table top. Anything and everything they can possibly think of should be considered. It could be the very thing that keeps them in here out of choice and protects the rest of your immaculate home from destruction. On that note, it is also a good idea to pick out certain storage bits and bobs that will help keep the place tidy and clutter free, things like treasure chests for their toys and teddies and coloured boxes that can stack safely. It will all help, we promise.

Collaboration – Guest Article.