When you’re decorating your first nursery, you have enough to think about without worrying about what is or isn’t going to appeal to your child as he or she matures. You need to ensure that you choose nursery furniture, or a nursery furniture set that meets your needs as new parents, is as safe as can be, and hopefully, which stands in harmony with the rest of your interior design.

However, as your child grows and matures, and new fancies spark and capture their burgeoning interests, you might be tempted to set them up a little nook of his or her own, imbued with the decorative trends that align with their interests. What better place is there to offer that than the child’s own room, and to start with a kids theme bed?

There’s more than one way to work a themed or styled bed into a setting, and unfortunately, there’s no way to really plan for it since you might not know what will catch and hold a child’s attention till early childhood. Still, they can provide a lot of value, as long as you incorporate them wisely.

The Challenges of Furnishing a Nursery

You’ll have to furnish a nursery long before you have to give any serious thought to kids theme beds, and the challenges of furnishing a nursery are pronounced enough. There are a lot of moving parts (hopefully only figuratively and not literally) and a lot of considerations to balance.

For example, you can’t predict what interests a child will grow into as he or she develops. That’s just categorically impossible to determine. You can try to encourage interests, and many parents do, but at the same time there are plenty of parents that encourage children to find their own interests so they can discover themselves, without projecting interest or bias onto them.

Therefore, when you’re setting up a nursery, it’s really about what you want as a parent more than what you believe the child will learn to want. This makes the decorative aspect of furnishing a nursery a bit of a chore. If you’re concerned about aesthetics, it is important to choose nursery furniture on a case by case basis and evaluate it carefully to ensure that it will work in a given setting.

Some of that can be squared away simply by buying a nursery furniture set instead of picking out all the parts and pieces one at a time. A nursery furniture set will at the very minimum ensure harmony among the pieces it contains, often a crib and a dresser, but often including others. The pieces in nursery furniture sets are often so selected specifically because they are finished or decorated in such a fashion that they are perfect mates for each other.

A nursery furniture set may also have the potential to scale with the needs of your child as he or she grows, and also with your family. For example, many baby cribs that are included with nursery furniture sets are actually convertible cribs that can convert into a toddler bed, even a daybed and then a full size children’s bed. This may potentially liberate you from the need to buy new furniture every year or so, and the harmony of the design aesthetic will be insulated against change.

You’ll also need to be able to ensure that all of the parts and furniture included with nursery furniture sets are guaranteed safe in a variety of ways. Many of them have drawer stops, rounded corners, anti-tip kits, and fully enclosed hardware to prevent pinches, scratches, and other unpleasant early childhood experiences.

However, challenging as it may be to furnish a nursery for the first time, the challenge continues as the child matures, because then you need to make a decision about how you’re going to scale the nursery to accommodate their needs. The purchase of a convertible crib will cover you for a time, but when a child’s wide eyes long for artistic inspiration and creativity as well as the environmental surroundings that encourage it, it’s hard not to provide.

This is where the value of kids themed beds can really come into focus. Kids themed beds give you an opportunity to do more to encourage your child’s blossoming imagination, and if you are thoughtful about how you incorporate them into your design, you can actually make your interior design all the more valuable and appealing by them.

Accommodating Children’s Interests as They Grow

Encouraging Imagination

While your first thought might be that you don’t really want to go through the effort of procuring a kids themed bed and then backforming the setting around it, that isn’t necessarily how you should approach the situation. There are plenty of good reasons that it’s worthwhile to foster a child’s interest as he or she grows, and you don’t need to consider it indulgent to do so. This is a matter of perspective, as are so many other things in life.

There are philosophies of education that hinge entirely on the interest of the child. They posit that if the student is interested, the learning will take care of itself. Interested students ask the questions that feed their desire to learn, resulting in better discovery, retention, and analytical reflection. In other words, encouraging interest will potentially have a positive impact on development and education.

There is also the more human side of this, which is that we want our children to be happy and we enjoy seeing them learn, grow and interact with the world around them. A kids theme bed does not have to stand alone - it can be simply one part of the greater furnishing and decoration of the room, and might serve as just one artistic element in design.

Ideas for Boys Themed Room

The ways in which you can decorate or theme a young boy’s bedroom are bound only by your imagination. As your child grows, pay close attention to the themes, topics and trends that capture his attention and get him to ask questions. Young children often show keen interest, even fixation, in the things that appeal to them.

One of the most iconic themes that has stood for young boys is somewhat automotive in nature. Engines, speed and cars appeal to little boys with nearly magnetic vigor, and that has made the classic “racecar” bed one of the most popular styles of themed beds. Perhaps you, yourself, had one when you were younger, or a friend.

Some beds are also themed according to the boy's interests in characters in popular comics, television shows or even books. More often than not, these types of themes are tied to visual decorations in the room or in the bedspreads than in the actual bed, though.

There are also nautical themes you can follow in order to encourage your child’s interest, as well as space themes following the idea of the stars, planets and rocket ships for inspiration. Your children might even show interest in airplanes, in which case a plane-themed bed might be more appropriate. There are plenty of young boys who show interest in just that very idea.

Kids Themed Beds for Girls: Design Ideas

If you’re raising a little girl, the same principles of guidance apply. As she grows, she’ll develop interest in those things that appeal to her, and you may choose to encourage her creative development according to her interests.

Just as with boys, there are no hard-set templates you can follow to guide your inspiration or your interior design, but there are several types of kids themed beds out there that cater to the common interests of starry-eyed little girls.

The classic counterpart to a boy’s racecar bed is probably the castle-themed or the princess-themed bed, around which design aesthetic an entire room can be decorated. There are plenty of castle-themed and other regal, princess themed beds out there that would be the envy of plenty of little girls.

Nearly as popular is a themed bed styled after the likeness of a carriage. It has the same tones of royalty as a castle-themed bed and leaves the same general impression, albeit in a creatively different package.

Just as with boys, girls may identify with influential characters from popular movies, books and other areas of pop culture. There are plenty of kids theme beds and even general room decorations that can be used to foster these interests and appeal to children.

Don’t Forget the Rest of the Interior Design

Something to remember when you are trying to determine whether or not a kids theme bed is in the interest of your home’s interior design and your child’s development is that it doesn’t begin or end with the bed. A themed bed will be somewhat out of place if you don’t account for the rest of the design as well.

Let’s just take a hypothetical scenario to account for this effect. If you have a little boy and decorate the room with a race car themed bed, that presents you with an opportunity to overhaul the rest of the room with similar, supporting designs.

Features of the room, furniture and other fixtures give you the ability to expand your creative horizons. Wall art like paintings and pictures, mobiles and hangings, curtains, and other aspects of the room can also be decorated accordingly. The same can be said for lighting fixtures and even lamps.

As for the rest of the furniture, there’s no reason you can’t specifically choose designs that compliment the overarching vision. Bookshelves, nightstands, and other pieces of furniture can be aligned with the automotive theme. You might even choose to decorate the surfaces in the room with models, figurines or other such art.

Some parents choose to wallpaper their children’s rooms according to a theme, in order to provide a sense of harmony in their interior design. If something like that appeals to you, wallpaper and paint colors are not the only way for you to make a match. You can also paint or stencil a mural or paint the ceiling in order to create a really custom look for your child that will have their imagination flourishing.

If you’re looking for a way to decorate in accordance with a theme that can be easily changed at a later date, especially as your child grows, consider changing only elements that can be easily reversed, or can accommodate a new design trend.

For example, instead of painting a mural, simply accent the kid’s bedroom walls, ceiling and floors with the colors predominant in the aspects of the design (like the bed). That way, while you might have a gray and red race car bed today, in a few years, that gray and red can accommodate whatever else your child grows into.

You can also decorate with themed area rugs, curtains, lamps, wall art and other decorations that can easily be removed from a room and are not permanent. That way, you can create the image of a full themed and customized room today and change it in the near future without too much work.

All in all, these are some great ways you can customize a child’s room according to his or her interests. There are many other ways you can complete the effect, but again, there is no standard template for that. What you need is a lot of inspiration and a healthy dose of creativity. Then the rest will fall into place. Of course, you can always accept the help that’s out there in order to help you complete the finishing touches on the design of your child’s room.

We Can Help!

Follow along with us here at Kids-N-Cribs on our social media accounts, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram and YouTube so that you can be ahead of news and specials. You can also take some inspiration for design from our social accounts, but if you need personal assistance, we are always glad to help.

Get in touch with us at 925-778-2229 and let us know how we can help you affect your vision. We’d be more than glad to assist, especially if you need ideas for how to create a cohesive design for a child’s themed room. Let us in on your vision and we’ll help you craft it at each step of the way.