Growing With Your Family: Designing Rooms That Change as Children Do
With the arrival of a new baby, there is always such excitement about the nursery - a little cot, perhaps a rocking chair and some storage for the tiny, little ones close that have been lovingly washed and folded. It’s rare at this stage to think how this room might evolve in the future, where will your future 5 year old put their dolls or teddies, or your future 10 year old who wants a lamp and desk in their room to do some of their homework independently. A children’s room designed just for one age will be one that you will have to constantly redo yearly. We see more and more parents wishing they thought ahead when it came to bigger decisions, so we’ve outlined the main things to think about when designing rooms for children.
We see this pattern often enough that it's worth naming directly: parents come to us wanting to get a nursery "right," when the more useful question is what the room needs to still be right for once the child who lives in it isn't a baby anymore.
1.Furniture that can double job
Although when starting out putting together a nursery you might be led to believe that your baby needs a matching wardrobe, change table and cot, the reality is two fold - one, the baby will have very little understanding if they’re matching or not, and two, this matching set has a seriously short lifespan. A changing table will get used for about a year and a half (in our experience after this time nappy changes become more like wrestling an alligator so are safer on a lower, flatter surface) and then it’s no longer needed. Instead, think about investing in a beautiful chest of drawers that when you add a changing topper becomes a workhorse of the room, but when needed can be removed and used throughout the child’s life as a place to house their clothes.
A toddler bed is similar, while a cot is necessary from a safety standpoint, a stand alone toddler bed in smaller dimensions than a typical 90cm x 190cm size is likely going to be grown out of quickly. It can also be such a challenge to find the right fitting sheets and duvet for anything smaller than a standard single, which during the night potty training years can add an additional annoyance.
Kids bedrooms are also wonderful places to explore vintage or antique pieces, whether they come from a shop or from your grandparent’s house. A feeling of heritage and soul comes with these pieces that can often add something special to a space.
2.Timeless palette with relevant changes
It's tempting to build a room around whatever a child loves this year — a character, a colour, a theme with a shelf life measured in school terms. We'd steer that enthusiasm toward the things that are easy to change (a print, a cushion, a duvet cover) and keep the walls, floor and joinery in a palette that can simply absorb whatever comes next. A soft, warm neutral does more work over a decade than any themed scheme does over a year.
3.Spaces that hold more than one activity at once
A five-year-old needs floor space clear enough for cars and puzzles. A nine-year-old needs a desk corner for homework. Both of these can exist in the same room if the layout is planned for it from the outset — a flexible floor zone, a spot earmarked for a desk even if the desk itself doesn't arrive for years and arguably most importantly an electrical plan that has planned out where a bedside table, desk lamp, etc may be needed in future. Planning this in from the start avoids the awkward halfway point where a room has clearly outgrown its purpose but nothing's been done about it yet.
Storage is worth a moment on its own, because it's the part most often designed for the wrong stage. Deep, open bins work well for a toddler who can't manage a drawer handle yet. A shelf that's too high today is exactly the right height in three years' time. Building in adjustable shelving, or simply choosing units with the option to add a rail or drawer later, means the room can be reconfigured without a single piece leaving the house.
An evolution
It can be a bit emotional to imagine all the ways your child’s room (and of course your child) will evolve over the years. There is no one perfect way to design a child’s bedroom, but there are ways of forward planning that means the evolution goes a bit easier.
If you're standing in a nursery right now wondering how far ahead to plan, that's exactly the kind of conversation worth having before a single wall gets painted. We'd love to talk through where your child's room is today and where it realistically needs to be in five years. Book a Discovery Call and we'll take it from there.