By Stuart Wintergear and Carol Wintergear
Your child’s bedroom should be a safe haven, a place where fun flows along with creativity and productive thoughts. Lighting a room with so many purposes can be challenging. However before you start buying and putting the lights in their room, wait and spend some time in understanding your child’s needs, personality and other small things. Children’s have slightly different lighting needs from us, adults. Also you should take decorating your child’s room as a great opportunity to illustrate off your playful side, do some personal bonding, and allow your children to be creative. Use your as many ideas and imaginations for decorating but, please keep one thing in mind, it should reflect your child’s personality and needs, not yours where we as parents make a mistake.
Understand the basics
Planning lighting needs for your child’s room is a great opportunity for you to show off your playful side, do some personal bonding, and will also allow your children to be creative. Use all your imaginative ideas in the process but the important thing to remember here is it should reflect your child’s personality, not yours. Talk to your child while making them part of your design work. Be interactive and if needed take them along with you while buying the lighting things. In any kid room you need to consider three types of lighting; ambient light which fills the whole room, Task lighting is the kind of lighting that brightens a particular area and finally accent lighting that adds a novelty touch to your child’s room.
The key factors to consider
Your kid’s age, whether a baby, early school years or teenagers. Age makes real difference in selecting and adjusting proper lighting ideas. As your child matures as do their rooms lighting needs. For example, babies need low-level lighting so you can see during those frequent trips in the night to feed, change and comfort. As you will spend a considerable amount of time in your baby’s room it’s important that you have a ceiling mounted bedroom light with a dimmer if possible would be ideal since it allows you to brighten the room when required and then lower the light at bedtime.
Also a kid room decorative lamp or two at proper light that gives off sufficient light is important when it coming to changing your baby or reading stories. Instead of kid lamps, one can also opt for a track lighting which are quiet adjustable to lighten while changing babies nappies or reading bed time stories. Also track lighting can be adjusted, rotated to specific areas as the child grows. Older, school going children and teenagers may have slightly different lighting needs. For example, some older children may get scared in the night if the room is dark, which in that case installing a night light opposite corner of the room and not shining in your child’s face to make them sleep is a good idea. Also growing children needs a balance of natural light and artificial lighting so operable skylights and windows will add charm to the room.
Your child’s personality and interests will also play a substantial role in understanding the lighting needs. If it is a small baby, try to understand what kind of interests or personality they can have by seeing their reaction on showing or displaying certain things. For example, babies will react very happily or enjoys certain types of pictures or colours or any objects, keep this in mind while planning the lighting. Like some babies may enjoy Airplane or other objects around a central ceiling fixture or pendant light. Bright red balloon wall light may also entertain your small ones. Generally, all most kids small or growing, love bright colors and novelty items like cartoon characters or any other funny animal characters.
Some children’s may like certain colours which in that case colorful catchy lights can be a good option. Well lighting your child’s room should co-ordinate with the overall decor but having that one wild lighting idea which excites your boy or girl is a must. Choose atleast one novelty theme to add a vibrant mood to your child room that compliments their hobbies and personality. Afterwards try to understand what kind of activities will be taking place in the room. Like sleeping, doing home work, entertainment, computer activities and many more such things. Parents should select task lighting that is most conducive to the different activities children pursue in their room. This will make the job of selecting and fixing task lighting to brighten up specific area used for an activity much easier.
If your child has a computer in the room, you’ll want to ensure a ambient soothing computer place. The trick here is to use task lighting to illuminate what is on the monitor and use an ambient light source to eliminate any contrast. If your child does all their home work on a desk table, try for safe table lamp or the best wall lights that lines up with your child’s shoulder when sitting up ready to read. Lighting that comes from behind her shoulder and slightly to the side will be the best for their eyes with out causing any damage to their vision. If your child likes to read in bed consider an adjustable kid room lamp or track lighting rotated to the bedpost. Reading will become more tempting to your child if you make the experience as comfortable as possible. If your children watch television in their rooms, don’t let them watch it in total darkness. It’s better for their eyes to use low-level light, either from a dimmed light or from a side light with the beam directed at the ceiling.
Never forget the safety of your children
While planning and designing your child’s room lighting needs, there are safety issues to consider first. The safest kinds of lighting fixtures to use in your child’s room are central ceiling fixtures, child wall lights and track lighting. The advantage here is that these types of fixtures won’t get damaged if your kids start playing around the room. Try to keep any light sources out of your child’s reach is always a good way to prevent light burns. In any case if you can’t avoid it then any light that their little hands can reach should preferably be fitted with compact fluorescent bulbs which are cool to touch Use track lighting or wall lights instead of table lamps since they always get knocked over and believe us, always us. When installing electrical wall socket, see that there are no loose cords hanging around and cover the empty sockets to ensure prying fingers can’t put it inside. Also avoid low pendant lights. They can be a hazard during pillow fights or when jumping on the bed.
Using the above provided information along with your imagination you can do wonders to your children’s room lighting and the way it will nurture their personality. Just remember, have fun and make it a team work with your child as your expert partner.
We at For your Home are specialists in helping you make better homes and gardens. You are always welcome to visit our online store at http://www.foryourhome.co.uk and our children lighting playground at http://www.foryourhome.co.uk/child-lighting/c/373_480.html
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