Sleeping, drinking, changing diapers – in the first months, the demands on a baby room are still low. However, when furnishing and designing a baby’s room, you should also think about it later from the very beginning. We have collected the most important tips and tricks for you regarding room design, growing furniture, and sensible purchases for the baby room.
Photo: Pixers
When Is the Best Time to Furnish a Baby’s Room?
Many expectant moms enjoy furnishing the baby’s room in the second trimester of pregnancy. By then, a woman is over initial nausea, fit, and full of beans. Use this time to think about decorating the baby’s room and collect the most beautiful ideas on blogs or Pinterest. Forays through furniture stores are also more pleasant than in the third trimester when everything becomes more burdensome. However, if you only find time to furnish your baby’s room during maternity leave, that’s no problem.
Start by purchasing a practical changing table with a washable changing mat, a baby crib that grows with your baby, and a comfortable piece of furniture like an armchair. With this basic trio, you already have everything you need for the early days in the baby room.
What Do I Need for a Baby Room?
A few things should not be missing when setting up a baby room: For the first time after birth, you need a cradle and a cozy area for breastfeeding and feeding. A soft rug, curtains, and decorations are also a good start. A changing table with fall-down protection and enough storage space for diapers, wipes, toiletries, and the first medicine cabinet is indispensable for the next two to three years. If you’re already thinking ahead, you can also buy a crib or baby bed that grows with your child and set up a floor-level crawling and playing area.
The Most Important Furniture for the Baby’s Room
1. The Baby’s Bed
A baby bed that grows with the child is a sensible purchase for the baby’s room. For the first time after birth, it finds a place next to the parent’s bed to breastfeed or feed comfortably at night. After six to twelve months, the offspring moves into its room. It is, therefore, not worth investing in expensive side beds. You can also buy them second-hand and sell them afterward. Rather, invest your money in a nice new bed your child can use for many years.
If you buy an ordinary baby bed or crib, you should allow for an area of at least 70 centimeters wide and 120 to 140 centimeters long. Like the side bed, baby beds are also on wheels, so you can flexibly vary the location. A cozy, padded nest guard surrounds your baby’s sleeping area and protects against drafts. As many advocates this nest protector has, many are against it because of the risk of suffocation. However, make sure to purchase a matching baby mattress simultaneously.
2. Around the Changing Table
When setting up the baby’s room, the changing table takes on a central role; after all, you will change your child there several times a day and change, wash, massage, pamper and play with him. When buying, look for a fall-down guard to the left and right of the changing surface. Many furniture stores offer combination changing chests that you can still use later as an ordinary chest of drawers. Or you can get a practical changing top installed on an existing chest of drawers. This way, you have space to store the baby’s clothes.
A soft padded changing mat with washable covers is mandatory on the changing table. Utensilos that you can hang on the wall next to the changing area to store creams, powders, diapers, etc., have also proven their worth. Because dirty laundry and trash accumulate at the diaper-changing station, you also need a trash can with a lid and a laundry basket.
For babies born in the fall and winter, midwives also recommend a radiant heater – for safety reasons; this should be installed at a distance of about one meter above the changing area: This will keep your baby nice and warm, especially in the early days when he or she is not yet able to regulate his or her body temperature optimally. With a mobile above the changing table, your baby has something to look at.
3. Set Up a Breastfeeding Corner in the Baby Room
Whether a rocking chair or wing chair: a personal cuddle corner where you can breastfeed your baby or feed him with the bottle should not be missing in any baby room. A few pillows, blankets, and some pretty wall paint and decorations are already enough for the design. A rug visually demarcates this area and provides coziness – so it can still be used later as a reading or sitting area.
Tip: Keep some gauze cloths handy in this area; you’ll need them after dinner.
4. Think About the Crawling Area
A crawling corner looks good on the floor of the baby’s room because, after just six months, you will put your child down more often so that he can observe and explore his surroundings. For this purpose, get a soft carpet or a cuddly crawling blanket and cozy floor cushions for yourself. A play arch, where your baby can lie and occupy himself, is a useful addition. A decorative eye-catcher in the baby room is also a play object, such as a teepee tent made of beautiful fabric with pillows underneath or a rocking horse. Both look good and will be played with for the next two to four years.
Photo: living4media/Bauer Syndication
Attention Stereotypes!
Do not be guided by stereotypical ideas when designing your baby’s room. Pink for girls and blue for boys is no longer the standard! Rather, choose a color concept that suits your taste and harmonizes visually with the baby’s equipment and furniture. You can do little wrong with a sporty turquoise, a soft mint green, cream, gray, or dove blue – no matter whether boy or girl. You can set accents, for example, with an unusual wallpaper, such as one with geometric patterns like wavy lines or dots. If you stay with the wall color monochrome, you can enhance the walls in the baby room with pictures or pretty wall tattoos for the nursery.
Lighting in the Baby Room: Night Light & Co
Combine at least two to three light sources in the baby’s room. A ceiling lamp or ceiling washer provides optimal illumination when changing diapers and playing. With another table or wall lamp, you can make the lighting mood cozier and illuminate the room optimally. The third light source should be a pretty night light or snooze light for your baby, which you ideally mount directly above or next to the baby bed.
Photo: Lights4fun
Baby Friendly Flooring
The carpet in the baby’s room should be soft and cozy so your baby can lie there comfortably for the first year and observe the world. If you choose a coarse carpet, you can add coziness with pretty fur or a crawling blanket. Knitted rugs are a visual eye-catcher – they convey the traditional look from grandma’s times and, with additional floor cushions, become an inviting seating oasis for parents.
Decoration Ideas for the Baby Room
Carpet, pictures, and lighting are essential to the baby room decor. Online and concept stores now offer the most beautiful print motifs, illustrations, and photographs, especially for baby rooms. But maybe you feel like decorating your baby’s room with personal photos from your childhood or the first baby photos of your child individually and uniquely? These can be easily enlarged and printed on canvas. Smaller pictures look especially appealing when you put them on the wall next to each other or grouped in two- to three-part collages or the so-called Petersburg hanging.
Furnishing Tips for Small Baby Room
Do you have only a tiny baby room available? Simply solve the space problem creatively with a space-saving changing unit with integrated drawers. So you can store baby clothes and utensils directly below the changing surface. Wall shelves installed above the changing unit are just as practical. But beware: such installations must be mounted fall-proof so you do not fall on your baby. Read more about child safety here.
No room for the changing unit? Then simply fix a changing table above the bathtub. Here washcloths are immediately at hand, and the rest is in storage baskets.
What Does It Cost to Furnish a Baby’s Room?
How much it costs to furnish a baby’s room depends primarily on the furnishing wishes of the parents. If you buy complete furniture for a baby room in the furniture market, you have the advantage that the pieces of furniture are all of a piece and fit together. The average cost of a three-piece set – consisting of a baby crib, changing unit, and wall cabinet or shelf – is between $500 and $1,000, and the sky’s the limit for premium baby furniture manufacturers.
Individual solutions for furnishing the baby room are more favorable and, in many cases, more beautiful. More and more parents are opting for a modern mix & match interior with a mixture of newly purchased and used retro baby furniture. In many cases, people also use mementos from their childhood, creating a very personal concept for the baby room. In addition, you can also buy many baby furniture in online stores and baby specialty stores individually – and thus put together your design.
Via Ebay classifieds or Whatsapp flea market groups in your region, you can find second-hand baby room furniture that is usually still in perfect order. After all, it has only been used for a few years. For this, you often save half to two-thirds of the new price.
