According to statistics, a five-year-old child laughs 300 times a day, and an adult laughs at most 20. Do you want to design a nursery so that it evokes only positive emotions in both children and parents? Our recommendations and advice from the stars will help you.
How to decorate a nursery
- House in the nursery. Children need a lot of space for outdoor games, so the more spacious the nursery, the better. But at the same time, the child needs a secluded shelter. In this attic nursery, the corner turret plays its role. You can put a toy house in the room: the baby will willingly climb there, especially when he is upset about something.
- Painted walls. The safest wall coverings for a child’s health are paper wallpapers and water-based paint. The main advantage of painted walls is that they can be washed. (Please note that only class 7 water emulsion withstands water procedures. The third and fifth classes are not moisture resistant.)
- depending on age. For a baby’s room, pastel colors with separate bright accents are suitable. The abundance of rich tones tires him. Children from three years old will like bright colors and funny characters on the walls. Choose a wall covering for the nursery that is easy to change – paper wallpaper or .
- Colored furniture. Furnishing a bedroom for several children is not an easy task. Different beds – ugly, the same – too much like a pioneer camp. Buy several identical wooden beds and paint them different colors. This is an excellent solution for a large family or for a country house, where all relatives come down to the seventh generation for the holidays.
Dana Borisova, TV presenter. This fall we are moving to a large house, where my daughter Polina will finally have her own room. I already had time to feel her absence to the full. The number of toys is growing exponentially every month. We had a special children’s chest of drawers, which at first saved a lot, but then we still had to buy special boxes. In addition, Polina is a real fashionista, she has more dresses than me. So over time, I was forced to share shelves and hangers with her in my own closet. But the nursery is not only a toy store, it is, first of all, the child’s personal space. When I was little, my mother always tried, at least with a curtain, to shield my sister and me from our private corner, and this despite the fact that we lived in a communal apartment. Of course, I will try to make a beautiful nursery for my daughter, most likely in pastel colors. A sort of room for a little princess. I will not turn to a professional decorator, I think that I can cope with the choice of furniture and light. Who, if not me, knows what my child needs.
- Children’s room in the attic. Low sloped ceilings for adults are a true punishment: cramped, uncomfortable, and you’ll get a bump. For children, the opposite is true. The danger of injury, due to their small stature, does not threaten them. Housing under the very roof (almost like Carlson’s) is the ultimate dream for them. A room with a sloping ceiling in their imagination easily turns into a hut or a cave.
- Surfaces on which to paint. Fighting the desire of the offspring to paint on the walls is useless. It is better to give them the opportunity to create without compromising the interior of the room and the family budget. Cover the cabinet doors or one of the walls with blackboard paint and regularly supply the younger generation with crayons. When the children learn to read, you can leave notes for them on the same chalkboard. (For a master class on its creation, read .)
- Loft bed. Sleeping place and gymnastic apparatus “in one bottle”. This piece of furniture is equally loved by both preschoolers and teenagers. We advise you to equip the bed with a protective side.
- Rocking chair. Practical Americans consider the most necessary piece of furniture in a newborn’s room … a rocking chair! Overseas mothers rock their offspring, not walking around the room with a baby in their arms, but swaying comfortably in a chair. When the child comes out of infancy, he will sway himself with pleasure.
Masha Tsigal, designer. We thought over the children’s room for Arseny even before his birth. The most interesting thing about it is an oval sliding bed made of wood (I didn’t want my child to sleep on plastic). Arseny loves soft velvet pillows decorated with appliqués with his favorite characters from Japanese cartoons. Blanket, bedspread and curtains are all in the same style. All this was made according to my sketches in our studio. As for my nursery, I remember that the most interesting subject was the bar table. Mom, not understanding its true purpose, decided that it would look great there. But I liked the table, I put books and toys in the holders for glasses and dishware shelves. It seems to me that parents should definitely participate in the design of the nursery. For example, we ourselves covered the walls of our son’s room with art painting. True, now Arseny has pretty much corrected our masterpiece, but the ability to paint on the walls of your own nursery is happiness.
- Strip. This ornament looks fun, but at the same time not childish. Suitable for a room where children of different ages live.
- A canopy over the bed. There are eternal values in the world! Despite the subversive work of showbiz sharks, girls still dream of being princesses, not cat women. The easiest and most effective way to turn a nursery into a royal bedchamber is to hang a canopy over the bed.
- Wood and cork floors. The best floor covering in the nursery – , especially oak. It is hard and moisture resistant. Cork floors are fine too. They reduce sound and mechanical vibrations, you can walk on them almost silently: there is less risk of accidentally waking a sleeping child. Coated with varnish or wax, they are able to withstand severe stress. Cork is a natural antistatic agent, indispensable for allergy sufferers: the floor is not electrified and does not attract dust.
- Safe furniture. Making the room safe for the baby will be easier if you first squat down and view the room from their perspective. But removing all potentially dangerous objects from the access zone is not enough. You will need gates for stairs, stoppers for cabinet doors, soft stickers for furniture corners, plugs for sockets. IKEA offers a good selection of security products (Patrol line).
- Visual aids as a decorative element. It is better not to glue maps, inscriptions in foreign languages and other visual aids on the wall tightly, but to attach them so that they can be changed as needed. Place materials at such a height that all important information is at the level of the child’s eyes. The cognitive value of the wall-to-wall maps is very doubtful: children will be perfectly versed in the seas of Antarctica located at the bottom edge of the map, but they will not be able to distinguish England from Germany.
- TV and DVD player. Do you need a TV and a DVD player in your children’s room – it’s up to you. But if you think that a child should watch cartoons in his room, set the turntable higher – so that only adults can reach it. The TV screen, on the other hand, should be placed lower so that during the movie show young viewers do not have to lift their heads up. And so that the younger generation is not carried away by non-childish programs, do not connect the TV to an antenna with terrestrial and satellite channels. Then you can have complete control over the repertoire.
- Lower shelves for “adult” items. Plan storage systems so that clothes, diapers, and other essentials can be reached with one hand. It is not very convenient to bend over with a child in your arms. But toys are best placed on the lower shelves so that young owners can get to them themselves.
- Carpet. From the point of view of hygiene, it is not the best choice for a nursery. The carpet collects dust, which can cause allergies in the child. If you think carpeting in your nursery is necessary, instead of a carpet or a large rug, buy one or more small machine washable rugs.
- Thematic furniture. Psychologists advise not to get carried away with “play” furniture when decorating a nursery. Children are fickle creatures: today they are crazy about ninja turtles, a week later they are raving about Spider-Man. At first, a bed in the form of a car or a boat will delight the offspring, but soon the game of captain or driver will bore him. Do not limit the child’s imagination: he is able to turn the most ordinary bed into a sailboat, car or spaceship only through the power of imagination.
Valeria, singer. We have two children at once in our house. True, the room of the eldest daughter Anya can hardly be called a nursery. Everything is grown up there. Huge library and all kinds of computer equipment. The second is the room of Thema and the Canopy. When the boys found out that they would live together, they immediately requested a bunk bed for themselves. Otherwise, their hideout is a real boy’s paradise with an unimaginable number of toys, consoles and some gadgets I don’t understand. When the games begin, all this spills out on the floor and spreads throughout the house, so you need to walk carefully so as not to trip over another typewriter or gun. And since I hate clutter, Yosei and I had to buy colorful plastic boxes for the kids so that they could not only easily get their toys out, but put them together just as quickly. The nursery should be not only beautiful, but, first of all, comfortable. So the presence of a variety of shelves and spacious cabinets is only welcome.
- Remote nursery. Preschoolers love to play near their parents. The nursery, located at the other end of the apartment from the main “event center” (living room or kitchen), is doomed to desolation. On the other hand, adolescents feel freer when away from the adult habitat. What a life it is if even the music cannot be turned on at full volume!
- “Extra” furniture. When it comes to a preschooler’s room, the main principle is that the less furniture, the better. A child, especially one living in a city apartment, needs as much space as possible to run and jump. The chess table can be replaced with a folding chessboard, and instead of a drawing table that takes up half a room, you can put a compact easel. By the way, according to orthopedic doctors, the most necessary items in a preschooler’s room are a folding trampoline and gymnastic rings.
Andrey Grigoriev-Apollonov, singer. After a family council about a room for Vanya and Artyom, my wife and I decided to contact an agency specializing in the design of nurseries. As a result, we were offered an interesting project. On the floor there will be a chocolate-colored African wenge tree. The walls are creamy and covered in graffiti. From the furniture – two wardrobes with the names of the sons, also written in the graffiti style. We decided to put a two-story bed, made to order: it is all iron, orange-blue. Naturally, the room will have a round children’s table, toy boxes decorated with images of famous cartoon characters, and bean bag chairs that take the shape of a body. On the ceiling there are lamps in the form of the moon, sun and stars. We decided to abandon the curtains, and instead of them we will most likely hang textile blinds. There will also be a slot machine in their room, which we have already ordered in America. From the nursery, the door leads to the children’s bathroom, the walls of which are lined with mother-of-pearl mosaic in the form of waves. In general, the boys will love it!