Article: Inhabitant
Creating Fun & Funk In The Little Person’s Room
Children’s bedrooms are arguably the rooms in your home that are the most fun to design and decorate. The age, gender and personality of your child are the three main influences on how you approach the enjoyable task of designing a child’s room.
Colour is important to how your child will use the space, some children benefit from being surrounded by quiet soothing colours while other children enjoy bright stimulating rooms to play in. When it comes to sleeping the lights are generally off or dimmed therefore strong colours will not hinder sleeping patterns.
The way in which you apply colour to a child’s bedroom can be approached in many ways. You can apply colour to the walls, add furniture, soft furnishings, window treatments or toys and co-ordinated accessories. If you don’t want coloured walls in your home you could hang large painted canvases on the walls. Children are often fantastic artists and you could let your child apply their favourite colours and creations. Using canvases allows you to be able to change the theme and colour scheme in the bedroom as your child grows and changes. Mural Art is also a lovely way to enhance the room, you may be talented enough yourself to do this or you could employ an artist to do it.
Furniture selection requires a bit of future proofing so that the pieces you select grow with the needs of your child without you having to repurchase as their needs develop. Depending on your space, beds are the main requirement of the room and often more than one bed will be needed at some time. Bunks and roller-a-way beds a great space saver while allowing an otherwise single room to accommodate more than one child overnight.
Bedcovers drapes or blinds add colour and texture to your child’s bedroom and can be themed to suit what ever your child is passionate about at any given time. Soft furnishings are reasonably replaceable as the child grows with the exception of drapes which can be costly to replace.
Carefully selected pieces of furniture can make a huge difference to enhancing a bedroom, storage and practicality are vital but design and colour are also important. Childrens furniture design is vast and there are many ranges out there to choose from. You can purchase new or re-vamped and individually designed pieces.
If you don’t have the time or confidence to decorate your children’s bedroom alone, an interior designer can lead you in the right direction to choosing and co-ordinating the right colours and furnishings to create a special environment to suit you and your childs needs.
Paula Saunders studied Architectural Draughting graduating with a New Zealand Certificate. As an artist, Paula has always had a keen appreciation for design while holding an interest in the technical side of architecture. Having worked and trained staff in design in the Kitchen Manufacturing industry Paula decided to broaden her horizons and set out on her own to work in Interior Design. This has been a successful choice for the past 14 years during which she also managed to bring up her two sons, Tomas and Rory. At present Paula runs her own business
‘Time4Design’ and provide an interior design service to Golden Homes Ltd, David Reid Homes, Latitude Homes, and Classic Builders while also working for the private sector throughout the northern regions.
