Who says you can’t be stylish when you have a child in tow? For those who are expecting their first born anytime soon, no doubt you’ve already thought about preparing your home for the potential devastation brought on by Hurricane First Born Child. And while it’s not early enough to break out the garden furniture just yet, when you’re thinking about the best way to make your home child-friendly, but also stylish, what can you do?
Colour Minimises Mess
The more colour you have in the home, the fewer stains will show up! For the uninitiated, babies get sick- a lot! You will find random milk stains everywhere in the first few months, so the best offset is to introduce swathes of colour. It helps to give your home some vibrancy, but it will also help to disguise those unsightly stains. You can easily add rugs to the hallway and the living room to pep up those areas.
Pick Easy Maintenance Materials
Children are dirty, let’s get that out of the way now! So if you’re looking to keep your home presentable, you need materials on your couches and chairs that can be easily wiped up. You can either go for a natural looking leather or go for something like water-repellent microfiber. And always have a wet cloth to hand! You might find that your baby gets progressively messier the older they get, and this doesn’t stop until they’re old enough to leave.
Pick Your Angles Carefully
When your child starts to walk, your heart will skip a beat every time they run anywhere near a pointy item of furniture. It would be beneficial to pick couches, chairs, and sideboards that don’t have as many sharp edges. Incorporating child safety enhancements into your home design not only ensures a safer environment but also keeps your style intact. Danetti UK is one such furniture designer that creates many different styles to suit any home, but you can also push for the safety aspect a bit more.
Embrace Mess In The Kitchen
If you want to make your living room look like the middle pages of a catalogue, one of the rooms in your home has to bear the brunt of the mess. The kitchen might be the best option, especially if you’ve got such a large space. If not, then it’s got to be a spare room where you can dump all of the old toys, new toys, and pieces of cardboard that your baby would love to play with! Keeping on top of a clean house when you have a child is pretty much the equivalent of climbing Everest, but only with more porridge stains!
Remove The Carpet
Modern laminate flooring is very stylish, and carpets, no matter how recently they were installed, will age badly. Besides, laminate flooring or tiles are easier to clean. Practicality comes first when it comes to making a stylish home, and this is doubly so when you’ve got a child on board. And as long as you are prepared for the fact that your child will make a mess, this forces you to think more creatively about how to make your home more stylish.
16 Comments
We had a big, brown cord sofa when the boys were little. It wasn’t the prettiest sofa around, but it hid a multitude of sins and stains!
Yeah I bet it did, great idea though!!
Great tips! My youngest is on the edge of crawling, so we’re back to making everywhere baby friendly again 🙂
Oh yes I am glad I don’t have to do that again!
I’m so with you on the leather sofa. So practical but looks great too.
Yes I quite agree, much easier to wipe everything off!
I am sure parents-to-be / new parents will find this useful. I had a cream carpet in the lounge when I had my eldest, safe to say it didn’t last long and I soon replaced it with wood flooring x
Yep we have wooden flooring for these very reasons!
Some great tips! I have been waiting for years to decorate but I also have a dog too, so will have to wait a little while before I can get new carpets. Do love that rug though! Sim x
The dogs cause more mess I think!!
Such good points here, especially about colour hiding stains, I’d have never thought about this x
Thanks, colour hides a lot!!
I really wish I hadn’t put down brand new carpet…1 month before my twins were born. FYI everyone – milk stains continue way past the baby stage – ask my toddlers who poured 2L of milk on my carpet one morning!
Oh yes I remember those days of twins and there antics! Although mine are now 8 and they still do stuff like that!!
What a fantastic insight you home is a perfect example how you can live stylishly while being baby proofed x
Thank you