Making the most of a small bedroom can be a challenging task – especially when kids are involved. The smallest members of your household take up a surprising amount of space thanks to the entourage of belongings they seem to come with.
Children don’t tend to get the master bedroom either (unless you’re very generous parents – I’m definitely not one of those, I like the big bedroom for myself). What tends to happen is that your child – with all their belongings – gets crammed into a smaller room that can feel like it’s bursting at the seams.
That’s when you need to get clever with making the most of the room.
No space should be wasted and no clutter should be on display. With careful planning and tailoring these tips to your own specific circumstances, you should be able to make the most of your child’s tiny bedroom.
Making the Most of You Kid’s Small Bedroom
It’s important to remember that bedrooms should be a relaxing space. The aim of the game is to give your children a good night’s sleep in a calming room. The chaos of clutter can distract your little ones and keep them awake.
These space saving tips with help you maximise a small room:
Invest in a bed that offers storage
A bed in a bedroom in non-negotiable. It’s the main feature and entirely necessary if you want your child to sleep in their room. While the bed needs to take up some space in the room, it doesn’t need to be space wasted. A popular storage choice is a divan bed with drawers. These are great for storing clean bedding, clean pyjamas and things like underwear, school books and generally anything that will fit in there.
Another great storage option is an ottoman bed. These beds allow you to lift the mattress and use the entire base for storage. You could keep anything in there from toys to to the hand-me-down clothes you’ve kept from their siblings and are waiting for them to grow into. The storage allows everything to be kept out of sight and leaves all the surfaces clutter-free.
Consider sliding doors
The space behind an open door can be easily wasted, by choosing a sliding door, you’ll create more usable space in the room, whether the door is open or closed. Sliding doors are often forgotten about when people are revamping their home, but it’s an alteration that can free up loads of space.
Wall storage
Don’t waste the space on your walls by leaving them blank. Clever shelving solutions will allow you to have a place for everything and put everything in its place. If you don’t like the look of open shelves, you can invest in lightweight storage boxes to keep miscellaneous items well-sorted and out of sight. It’s really important to ensure that the shelves can take the weight of things like heavy books and mixed toys. you don’t want anything to fall on your little one if the shelving gives way.
It is possible to get industrial strength wall brackets that are designed to look on-trend and in style (rather than warehouse ready), and you can always pay a professional to install the shelving if you’re nervous about whether it will hold what it needs to.
Don’t go over the top on furnishings
It can be tempting to add more furniture to a room than it really needs. Part of interior design is accessorising, and that can involve buying pieces just because they’ll look good in a room. If the room is tiny, a minimalist approach is always advised (even if it’s secretly maximalist behind all the storage). If the room works well with just a bed and a wardrobe, then so be it. There’s no point in cramming extra furnishings in there, they only become an expensive way to trip you up.
Consider storing things away from the bedroom
Kids aren’t kids forever and they grow out of things in the blink of an eye. If they go through a period in there life where the toys they love and regularly play with don’t fit in their bedroom, then find those toys a new home. We’ve got a pretend kitchen that my son loved and my daughter adores. We had a spare bedroom where the toys lived before the littlest one came along, but now we don’t and we’re out of bedroom storage options. The kitchen currently lives in the corner of our lounge and we’ve got no regrets. In reality, she’ll probably only play with it for another year or two, then we can pass it on. If you’ve got space elsewhere in the house, it might be worth letting their toys spill over. I promise it won’t be for long.