Redecorating is a challenge when you’ve got kids. You can’t buy expensive furniture, and you need to be careful about your décor. Some parents wait to decorate until their kids are older, but you don’t have to do that. Here are some ideas for making your home beautiful and child-safe today:
- Avoid window blinds with cords
With kids in the home, redecorating requires compromising on some big design elements like your window blinds. The style of your window coverings can make or break your whole theme, but it’s possible to maintain your style with child-safe blinds.
According to the Consumer Protection Safety Commission (CPSC), one child dies each month by getting tangled in window blinds. It’s not enough to tie up the loose cords and try to keep them out of a child’s way. That’s why cordless blinds were created. With cordless blinds and shades, there are no dangling cords waiting for an accident to happen.
- Redecorate with cordless blinds or shades
If you’re worried about style, cordless blinds can look exactly the same as corded blinds. Rather than pulling on a jumble of strings, you push a toggle button to move them up and down. Some come with a remote control. Cordless blinds look better, since there isn’t a giant tangle of leftover string hanging off the side.
- Avoid long drapes
Children easily trip over long drapes. Long drapes are elegant, but they’re not your only option to achieve an elegant look.
Your drapes don’t have to touch the floor. You can find beautiful drapes meant for shorter heights, or use curtains. Instead of separating rooms with floor-length curtains, install a sliding door that hangs from the same space where your curtain rod would go.
- Repaint with a magnetic additive
If your child loves to see you display their artwork, paint the walls with a magnetic additive so you can put their art anywhere.
- Avoid free-standing objects that are easily knocked down
Candelabras, single candle holders, and small potted plants are just a few examples of objects that will get knocked over. Knocked over plants can ruin your rug, and anything made of glass can shatter. Avoid anything that can be easily knocked down, whether it’s breakable or not. If your child decides to turn soft objects into a bowling pins, you’ll be picking those items up over and over again.
Every parent’s definition of “easily knocked down” will be different. If your child roughhouses frequently, it’s best to avoid heavy free-standing décor, too, like statues. Your child might bump into it several times in an active attempt to get it to fall over.
- Buy high-quality furniture
HGTV’s tips for family-friendly redecorating makes a good point about why you should buy high-quality furniture when you have kids. Yes, they’re probably going to use your recliner as a trampoline and bounce off of the couch – that’s why you need high-quality furniture.
The guide suggests looking for heavy, solid furnishings that are constructed with kiln-dried hardwood that has been screwed, glued, and corner-blocked. Upholstered pieces should have eight-way ties, and couch cushions should spring down to help retain their shape. High-quality pieces of furniture can take a beating and simply be reupholstered when your kids are older.
It doesn’t make sense to buy cheap, uncomfortable furniture that you have to take to the dump every couple of years.
- Make sure corners are rounded
If you have no other reason to buy a round dining table or an oval coffee table, do it because it’s safer than rectangular tables. Your child won’t always be at eye-level with sharp corners, but their face isn’t the only part of their body that needs protection. As adults, it’s not too rough bumping into the corner of a table. To a child, it’s extremely painful.
If you can’t give up your corners, get some soft rubber corner bumpers. They come in all shapes and sizes, and even sometimes cartoon characters.
- Ditch the traditional bunk beds
Kids love bunk beds, and they’re convenient when you have two or more kids. However, each year, more than 35,000 children end up in the ER to treat injuries related to bunk beds. Most injuries are minor, but there have been cases where bunk beds have collapsed and resulted in death.
Instead of bunk beds with complicated builds and high ladders, get a platform bed with a trundle bed that rolls out of the bottom. The platform doesn’t need to be more than 18” high, and you’ll still save space.
Have fun decorating
Get your child involved in the redecorating process, too. Let them choose their room décor, at least within reason. Even if they end up hating the green and purple walls they chose, they’ll appreciate the experience when they’re older.