Turning Your Palace  Into a Child-Friendly  Home from houseofarearugs.com

When you and your partner were just a couple on your own, without any children, you could decorate your home in any style that you wanted. You could choose any coffee table, chairs or cabinets that you liked and leave as many ornaments that you wanted lying around, but now that you have young children, this is no longer possible because small hands have a habit of dropping things and little heads are easily banged on sharp corners.

Of course, even though having young children means that your home will no longer look like a museum, and you will spend the next few years chasing after little finger marks and endlessly trying to keep the house tidy, you don’t have to give up your artistic designs and beautiful décor completely. All you need to do is adapt your house to be a safer place and to start decorating your home in accordance with your children’s needs.

Here are a few tips that may help you:

- Keep your overall look simple. A room looks far tidier when there are fewer ornaments to dust and put away. Many ornaments, especially if they are made from glass or china, are also positively hazardous to young children, who would be attracted by their bright glow. Rather than fighting with your children and putting the ornaments higher and higher, it is better to put them away for a few years. Leaving open spaces also makes the house feel less claustrophobic and easier to play in.

- Avoid chairs and cabinets with sharp corners as these can be dangerous. Round corners also look far more elegant in any living room. Functional and safe but classy is the name of the game.

- Keep your home looking cheerful. Don’t overload the walls with too many pictures, but don’t leave them completely plain either. In your children’s rooms, you may want to put up notice-boards so that they can put up examples of their artwork and feel that they are also decorating the house in their own way.

- When you buy drapes and sofa covers, apart from looking at the color and the texture, make sure that they are made from easily washable fabrics that can easily be removed and put into the machine.

- Try to keep to neutral colors where possible. Pure sofas and carpets will not stay that way for long. On the other hand, using only dark colors can make the house look dingy and depressing.

The greatest home gift you could buy your kids has to be an area rug. Putting a large soft rug in the middle of the room that your children play in the most will give them a safe, comfortable place to have fun.

Kids’ rugs come in variety of kinds - in colorful floral designs, animal shapes, and in pretty pink and blue. Kids’ area rugs are soft, washable, and fun to play on. Smaller rugs, such as floral area rugs, could be put in the children’s bedrooms so that they will have a soft surface to tread on when they get up in the morning.

Having children certainly makes a difference to your home. Yes, it’s true that it will no longer feel like a museum but children add something even more special to your home than any fancy décor ever could – they bring life, vitality, and love, and that’s worth far more than any piece of antique furniture.