Kids Zone

Not only a place for restorative sleep, a child’s bedroom is ideally one that is both cheerful and stimulating. With functional yet fun furniture, and little injections of colour and personality, this can be achieved.

The main purpose of the bedroom is to gain restful slumber, so the first place to start is with a great bed and mattress. Rachel O’Connor, Nursery Marketing Manager at Naturalmat in Exeter, believes that beginning with the basics is essential. “Mattresses made with natural and organic ingredients that are inherently breathable and help regulate body temperature are vital for a great night’s sleep,” she says. Naturalmat’s mattresses are made by hand, with every stitch, fibre and cover checked for comfort and quality.

The bedding plays an equally important role in ensuring a good night’s sleep. Rachel recommends wool duvets and pillows – being a natural insulator, wool traps heat when needed and disperses it when it gets too warm. “Wool is also anti-microbial to help prevent dust mites, making it ideal for allergy or asthma sufferers. We only use organic lambswool sourced from Soil Association-certified farms in Devon, Dorset and Cornwall,” explains Rachel.

For environmentally friendly (and baby-friendly) bedding, organic cotton is a good choice. Naturalmat’s range also comes unbleached and undyed, yet is machine washable for practicality. 

A cost-effective option for the bed base is to choose a cotbed that grows with the child. It is set up as a cot for a baby, then can be adapted to a junior bed, which should last until the child is five years old. The Oscar cotbed is Naturalmat’s most popular design: it’s easy to assemble and is transformed into a toddler bed by swapping the cot sides with low side rails. 

A common family struggle is keeping the children’s bedroom tidy. Little Devon Chairs, based online, builds multi-functional furniture – hand-crafted using traditional mortice and tenon or wood dowel joinery methods – to ensure a sturdy and robust frame. All the upholstered products contain a fire-retardant liner. 

The upholstered toy box chest is the most popular item, being large enough to accommodate favourite toys as well as being a handy seat. It can be personalised with a painted finish, complete with names and pictures. Lucy Codner and Paul Sethi, founders of Little Devon Chairs, believe that both practicality and safety are important. “We have over 90 fabrics to choose from for the upholstered seat, and 20 paint colours for the wood finish. The chemical-free aspect of our paint is extremely important both for the environment and the health and safety of children,” says Lucy.

Little Devon Chairs offers a storage option in all of its ranges, from the small seats to the desks, with a colour finish to complement any room’s décor. The company’s newest product, the twin toy chest, is useful for a shared bedroom, as it can be made with two separate storage compartments, keeping treasured toys apart; with bespoke personalisation and two separate seats, it transforms into a feature. “The toy boxes can be great for extra storage in a bedroom, playroom, nursery or even family space, due to the complete personalisation from the frame colour to seat fabric,” adds Lucy.

Once the furniture and storage are in place, it’s the smaller finishing touches that will make the room feel personal to the child, and make it their own private domain. A wall-mounted noticeboard will also help to reduce the clutter, and Penny Silverthorne, founder of the Magnetic Noticeboard Company, an online company based in Woodbury Salterton, is on a mission to tidy up paperwork, photos and certificates! Her magnetic noticeboards (no pins needed) provide a display area and, to complement a tiny tot or tearaway teenager’s room, the boards can be personalised with colours, designs or even photos.

“The boards consist of a canvas print wrapped around a frame with a concealed sheet of metal that creates the magnetic feature,” says Penny. “Each board comes with coordinating hand-crafted wooden magnets. We can turn your favourite family photo into a noticeboard.”  For those with a clear idea of their interior scheme, the boards can be made with a piece of the customer’s own fabric, to tie in with their plan. A name or message can complete the look. “The boards have a soft appearance with no hard edges, unlike other magnetic boards, so are suitable for small children,” adds Penny.

Little minds can derive great pleasure from a colourful image. Terri Shaw, retail manager at GalleryFab in Newton Abbot, supplies artwork for a variety of tastes and ages. She finds that anything related to a work of fiction proves popular, such as Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake images. “Limited editions tend to be bought for new babies/grandchildren to be hung in nurseries, while for parents/grandparents who have full control over the decorating of a child’s room, the choice tends to be for classic book-related images.”

As well as the choice of picture, the frame can be tailored to suit the room’s décor. “We frame work for the gallery walls in the best colour and style for the image, while always keeping in mind the latest interior design trends,” says Terri.

While certain trends wax and wane, due in part to new film and book characters, some pictures remain timeless, with sentimentality and nostalgia playing a part in the decision to purchase. “We find that, as a child gets older, they lose interest in more childish images and it’s not until they become adults that they become sentimental about certain pictures,” says Terri. Framed posters and block mounts are both practical choices for a child’s bedroom. Standard-size posters can easily be changed within a frame, and block mounts (which are heat-sealed onto a wooden block, without the need for glass) are easy to keep clean.

To personalise the room further, mementoes or souvenirs specific to the child can be framed. Sports shirts, ballet shoes, medals and photographs can all provide a piece of wall art that the child will take pride in for years to come.