Choosing Childrens Bedroom Furniture and Designing your Child’s Bedroom – Tips From a Professional Interior Designer by Susannah Greenan

Designing a child’s room can feel quite daunting. Children can be harsh critics and all parents know how key a bedroom is to a child. In this article, I’ve written some of my top tips to consider if you are thinking of making over either a childs or teenagers room.

1. Decide what furniture you actually need, or, can fit in to the available space. Consider:

o Do you want a two or three door wardrobe (consider room for school uniforms, sports and PE kits, costumes and winter and summer clothing)?
o What style of bed do you want? If your child is of pre-school age, Government guidelines recommend low lying beds not more than 40cms from the ground;
o Is there sufficient shelving/storage for books, CD’s and other belongings?
o A desk to study at, house a computer at or simply draw and play at;
o A chair;
o A bedside table.

2. Take a look at just what your child has managed to accrue and you will be surprised, so don’t make the mistake of underestimating the storage space your child needs. Consider future needs, for example, whilst a desk may not be important right now, if they are moving to high school in a year or two, this will be important. Try to incorporate as much space and as many needs into your original design as possible.

3.Consider if the existing lighting and power sources are appropriate. If you need to move power points, add ceiling or wall lights or install new power sources, do this before anything else and then be sure to check that your new furniture can fit following any changes.

4. Most people have some limit on their available funds and so if on a budget, set a realistic one and stick to it. There is a lot of cheap bedroom furniture on the market, my recommendation is that you avoid it and buy product that won’t fall apart within the first 12 months. Is a warranty offered? Are there reviews on the sellers website? All of these can help you gauge the quality of a product if it is not a brand you recognise.

5. Involve your child in planning and designing the room as much as possible, it is their room! Clearly this will depend on the age of your child, but even four year olds can have very fixed ideas of what they want their room to look like. Choosing a theme together is really important and there are so many fantastic ones to choose from. Just keep in mind that you want a room that looks great and is a practical and functional space. A childs room is used very differently to any other room in the house. If you think about it, the room will have a number of uses: for sleep, relaxing, playing with friends and for older children - homework. Choose furniture that facilitates as many of these as possible.
6. It is fun to do the decorating yourself. If you are and are not that experienced, estimate how long you think it will take you and double it! This will sound really obvious but it is something I see time and time again and can make the whole process unnecessarily stressful. In short, choose a good time to do it when young children are cared for by someone else and you are not expecting anyone to stay for a few weeks. Inevitably your child will need to move into a spare room or double up with a sibling, there is nothing worse than rushing a job because visitors are due or because Christmas or a special occasion is looming.

7. If you are ordering new furniture, obtain an expected delivery date from your supplier. You can then plan your decorating work around that. I always suggest buying any accessories once the furniture is in place, so that you can really see what is needed. With themed bedroom furniture, you will need relatively few accessories as the furniture makes a huge statement by itself. For more neutral/plain furniture, accessorising can be more necessary. If you are buying accessories, don’t spend too much. Children will outgrow these relatively quickly and replacing accessories after 2 years or so is a cheap and effective way of updating a room so that it remains appropriate to your child’s age. There are so many good websites, not only srbWorld, that sell great room accessories. High street sales are also a great way of picking up bargains in this area.

Happy designing!