Decorating Your Child's Room To Encourage Independent Play

  If you live in a home without a lot of extra space, it can sometimes be hard to set aside a space for 

your young children to play in, which is why many parents often double their child’s bedroom up as 

their play space.

 But, when decorating and furnishing bedrooms, we mainly think of how everything affects sleep and 

tailor bedrooms to sleep above anything else. This is all well and good but can lead to your child’s 

bedroom not being set up in an ideal way to encourage independent play. So, we’ve got some advice 

to share on how you can decorate your child’s bedroom in a way that creates a safe space for 

independent play.

Open Floor Space To Create A Play Area

 If your child’s bedroom doubles up as a play space, then floor space is at a premium. Until children 

are old enough for video games and more grown-up types of play, most of their play will be done on 

the floor, so by maximizing floor space in their bedroom, you maximize their area for play and ensure 

they always have a space to play.

 A simple solution that most parents use is swapping out their bed for a bunk bed. With a bunk bed, 

you elevate their bed from the floor, leaving behind a nice chunk of usable floor space. As an added 

bonus, most children absolutely love bunk beds and enjoy the novelty of sleeping up high.

Keep The Room Well Lit For Playtime

 When using your child’s bedroom as their playroom will require you to keep the room appropriately lit 

during the day, if your child’s bedroom is dark during the day that will discourage independent play in 

the room and if the room is too bright at night, that will make it harder for them to sleep at night. So a 

happy medium of lighting between day and night is needed.

 An easy solution to this is to use both natural light and artificial light in your child’s room during the 

day but retaining the option to make the room dark at bed and nap times. For the natural light, a set of

day and night blinds would be perfect, as they can be partially open during playtime to let in light and 

fully closed at night to keep the room dark. Then for natural light, a ceiling light may be enough, but 

having a small child-friendly lamp will ensure that they can play unimpeded by darkness. 

Use Child-Friendly Storage Solutions

 An issue that often arises when trying to introduce children to independent play, is that they can still be reliant on their parents to help them play. Usually, this dependence is formed as they cant easily access their toys themselves, which means that any time they want to change what they’re playing with, they need a hand from an adult.

 To resolve this common problem, you should look into child-friendly and accessible storage options

for their toys. When toys are stored on shelves or in cupboards, young children can’t reach them and 

sometimes ground-level storage like chests can be hard for a child to open themselves. So, you 

should look for storage which can be placed on the ground and is light enough for your child to use. 

By doing this, you’ll find that your child can play and tidy up after themselves much more independently.