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Decorating Your Toddler's Room
Sugar and spice and all that's nice, so you have a lovely toddler, daughter and you'd like to decorate her room. So what do you do?
First you go online, and you look at pictures of toddler's rooms, and rooms to go, and bed-coverings, children's rugs, shelves, toy-boxes, toys, wall decorations, etc, etc. You look and look, till you've mastered the art of a great old-fashioned migraine headache.
So you decide to take a drive downtown to your local furniture store, seeing as furniture will be a big part of your decoration plans. You look through one store, and another. Becoming frustrated you decide to just go look at toys at the local toy store. Starting with doll-houses, perhaps you will find some ideas.
Well, after your day out you head back home, with lots of ideas but none that really reaches out and grabs you.
OK, now that you've put all of this effort into decorating your precious little girl's room, it's time to decide, on something especially since toddler's soon grow up, and you may find what works for a toddler does not work for an older child.
Let's see first what you can do, is take two Tylenol for your migraine that you got as you were running around looking for the most perfect decorations for your darling daughter. Then go take a nap, or if it is late just go ahead and go to bed, and get goodnight's sleep.
Now, let's do a do-over next morning. Take a deep breath, and now take an inventory of what your darling already has. Maybe you can work with some of the things your daughter already has.
This will save you lots of time, effort, and most of all money. Now, money may not be an obstacle for you if you have a toddler and are seriously thinking of doing a major decorating project just for your child. Maybe you've saved a lot back or took out a loan, or maybe you're just rich. Well, whatever your reasons or motive for wanting to redo your child's room we'll not focus on that. We'll just focus on the process.
I would however suggest that you take a look around your daughter's room, especially at her most favorite things. Also if your daughter has favorite colors this is another thing to look at. Sadly not all little girls, love pink, some really like blue, or yellow, or green or any number of other colors. (I love pink, my darling daughter does not, I was shocked when I learned my darling did not love pink as much as I did, especially as I dressed her in lots of pink -- oh, well time goes on, maybe one day I'll have a darling granddaughter who loves pink).
Moving on now, I would suggest, that you work around your daughter's favorites, and also around colors that your daughter likes or at least tolerates well. Colors that are easy to work into a theme. You can use various shades of beige for walls, or yellows, or my favorite pink, or even pale greens.
Light colors usually work well on your walls as an accent or neutral background for pictures, or posters. Plus you really don't want to make any toddler's room dark colored. Children need bright and happy colors. In my opinion which is limited to my own personal reflection on the matter.
OK, so the first thing you may want to do, if you have not already, is to completely empty your darling little girls room. While the room is completely empty, clean everything, windows, walls, closet, and floor, even the ceiling if you feel it needs cleaning.
Next decide if you will be painting your daughter's room, if so get all the prep work done first, put tape over windows, outlets, molding, etc, sometimes you can remove molding, but not always. If you have carpet and don't plan to replace it then you will need to make sure the carpet is covered to prevent any paint from getting on the carpet.
If you will be using stencils, to paint decorations on the walls, you will need to have those ready, you'll probably want to paint the walls first, let that dry completely they use stencils.
You can make your own stencils or you can buy pre-made ones. If you are artistically talented or can hire someone who is you may even decide to paint a mural on one or more walls. You may however decide to use wallpaper instead. If you decide on wallpaper, the amount of painting you may do, will be limited to the molding and possibly the doors and window frames.
After you take care of the walls, the next thing on your list should be the windows. A plain window shade is always a good choice, and then you can put curtain up to match your walls. For example if you use light yellow, then a white lacy curtain would look nice.
After you've taken care of the walls, windows and any painting you may want to do, you'll want to decide if you want or need to replace any carpeting. If you need to replace or want to replace any carpeting now is the time to do that before you start putting any furniture back in the room.
A dark brown carpet may hide a lot of dirt, and may also set off the walls so they look brighter, and more cheerful.
OK, now you are up to either putting the same furniture you had back in your darling daughter's room or purchasing new furniture and putting that into the room instead. If you decide to use what you have this will save some expense, and lesson your shopping spree. At least in regards to furniture purchases, which maybe a good thing in the long run.
There are many choices for you if you are buying new, you can even buy a whole bedroom suit complete with everything. "Rooms to Go" a (furniture store,) is an example of a place that sells everything you need to completely re-do a room. I believe they will even deliver and you can view many of their products online. This may prove helpful for you if you do not have a lot of spare time, or just want to be done already.
OK, so now you either put the old furniture back into your darling daughter's room. Maybe sanded and repainted, or maybe just well-cleaned, or you put new furniture in. Either way, it'll work.
Low shelves for your daughter's favorite dolls, books, and other toys, will not only be eye pleasing but will make play-time clean-up much easier. A toddler's tea table, complete with chairs, can make a cozy play corner for your darling daughter.
A small child-size rocking chair can be used in another corner near a low book shelf with a few favorite books, and stuffed animals. This makes for an early encouragement to like books and reading.
Using favorite toys, and favorite playthings, and even favorite books, to decorate your toddler's room can make your child's room a very pleasant area for your child. I would suggest that you do not however place computers or televisions in your child's room. Because movie time and computer time should be a family affair, a family activity, not something that just keeps your child occupied as you are doing something else.
A toddler's room should have a safe play area, and a place for all of their toys, books, and games, and also a place for all their clothes. It is best to have things on low shelves or low dressers so that your toddler can learn to put away their own clothes, toys, books and games. Unless of course you would not mind doing this for your child for a very long time, the sooner your child learns to put away their own belongings the better. Because this teaches the child responsibility and lightens the workload on you, a toddler can learn to put away their toys, and clothes.
A clean, orderly and neat room will help your toddler to be happier and more secure. As your child will be able to find what she may want to play with. It is also safer.
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