At first glance, furniture for a children’s room is the same as “adult” models, but smaller or more colorful. In reality, everything is much more complicated, as children’s furniture has more stringent requirements. Safe furniture for children’s rooms means a number of additional requirements.
Environmental Friendliness, Hypoallergenicity, and Absence of Harmful Impurities
The most environmentally friendly material used in furniture production is wood, but such furniture is quite expensive. In addition, wood is a soft material: any impact leaves dents on a wooden surface, and over time, such furniture will have to be renewed. More affordable options are made of MDF and chipboard. Chipboard is the cheapest material, but it contains formaldehyde resins, the amount of which is strictly regulated for children’s furniture. Therefore, when buying furniture from this material, you need to make sure that the content of harmful substances does not exceed the norm. The upholstery of upholstered furniture for a children’s room should be made of a strong, wear-resistant material that does not cause allergies. All surfaces must withstand wet cleaning and be easy to clean.
Reliability and Safety
Furniture in a children’s room is often used not only for its intended purpose but also as elements for play. Therefore, the design of furniture items must be reliable, without sharp corners and protruding external fasteners. If the child is small, there should be as few glass and mirror elements as possible in the nursery (most often these are the doors of cabinets, shelves, racks, and “pencil cases” for books). Such elements must be securely fastened in place, and their edges must be specially processed so that the child cannot cut themselves. If there are mirrors on the cabinet doors, a special film should be glued to the back of them. When the mirror breaks, it prevents the fragments from scattering, holding them in place.
Functionality and Ergonomics
As a rule, a children’s room is a small room in which you need to place many different types of furniture. To solve this problem and increase the amount of free space in the room, designers develop multifunctional models of children’s furniture. Examples include a loft bed (bed, wardrobe, desk, and drawers for clothes), or a computer desk with an overhead for discs and books. The size and design of children’s furniture should be such that it is convenient for the child to use. There are transformer models designed specifically for children. It is difficult to “outgrow” them, since the design of these models allows you to change the size of the furniture depending on the height of the child. With the presence of such designs in the nursery, there is no need to often buy new furniture. There are no strict requirements for the color scheme and style of children’s furniture. The main thing is that they please the child and correspond to the style of the room interior. It is advisable to avoid bright colors, otherwise, the child may become overtired. Soft pastel colors or classic wood colors are the best option in this case.