New baby? Six bedroom design tips for new moms
Having a child is a life-changing experience for all new moms. It’s joyful, exciting, exhausting and daunting.
Many new moms have no idea where to start with their first new arrival, and look for advice from experienced mothers, websites and books.
And, while there are many websites dedicated to how to bring your child up, there are not as many sharing design tips for their bedroom.
Your baby’s bedroom is an important part of their upbringing as they will be spending many hours there asleep or learning about their surroundings, at an age where their brain is like a sponge absorbing new information by the minute.
To help you prepare the perfect bedroom for your baby, here are six design tips.
1) The crib
The crib is a very important part of the room, as this is where your baby will be sleeping (or not in the early weeks…) for the first years of their life.
You want to get this part of the room right because if your baby is sleeping better, so will you! It will also give you more quality time with them during the day.
Make sure your baby’s crib is comfortably padded and has distractions to occupy their mind such as a hanging mobile, or toys and rattles for them to play with.
2) Paint the room
A new arrival into this world deserves a new lick of paint on their bedroom walls. You could stay with traditional stereotypes and go with gender-related colors like blue or pink, but why not do something different and paint a jungle scene on one wall?
This would provide perfect interaction for the child because as they grow they can learn to identify all the different animals. Maybe you’re a terrible artist? If so, don’t worry, you can always buy some fancy wallpaper that will do the same job of stimulating your child’s mind.
3) Make a growth chart
Another idea for a different wall is to paint or make a growth chart. Children grow at a phenomenal rate in their early years and what better way to chart their growth spurts than by recording it on the wall?
They can then look back in amazement when they see how quickly they grew through their early years. And if you have more children you can record their growth on the same chart for a fun comparison and endless arguments when they are teenagers!
4) Get a dressing table
A dressing table is an integral part of the new baby’s bedroom, not least because you will be spending an awful lot of time changing nappies in their early years, so you want it to be comfortable not only for the baby but also for yourself.
Make sure it is at the right height to protect your back and also ensure it has high sides so there is no possibility of your baby rolling out. You might also want to fix something to the ceiling above the table for your baby to look at and entertain them while you’re tending to them, to stop them wriggling about.
5) Fix a door latch cover
There is nothing worse than when you go into the bedroom to check your baby is sleeping properly, the door catches on the latch making a noise that wakes the baby up.
At 2am this could be very costly as you could be faced with being awake for the rest of the night.
An easy homemade solution to this is to fashion a latch cover from an old sock or handkerchief with two pieces of plastic to fix around the doorknobs. Now when anyone enters or exits the room it will be in silence and there is no chance of accidentally waking your baby.
6) Choose wall mounts
During the early months, you will want to make sure you have everything you need to hand, and what better way to do this than by creating a wall mount to hang everything off – from towels to headbands and clips?
It also provides an attractive display on the walls, further increasing interaction with the child. You can get creative using odds and sods from around the house such as clothes pegs, so you can even turn it into a new creative hobby.
Have fun preparing your baby’s bedroom
As we have seen, designing a new baby’s room opens up many creative opportunities, from painting and decorating to ensuring that the crib and dressing table are safe, functional, and playful.
You can experiment with hanging designs and quick fixes like a door latch cover to make life easier. Best of all, it really is a blank canvas so choose designs to engage and entertain your child, and hopefully, you’ll get a few hours of sleep yourself!
Photo by Minnie Zhou
