Children need a great deal more sleep than teenagers and adults. It’s incumbent on parents to do everything in their power to do what’s necessary to help their children get the amount and quality of sleep they need. Good sleep plays a significant role in a child’s physical, mental and behavioral development.
Among the things you can do as a parent to help your children get the sleep they need is to provide the optimum environment for sleep. That starts with your child’s bedroom. Indeed, the way your child’s room is designed could have a positive or negative impact on their sleeping habits. To that end, here’s some design information you can consider to help you create the right sleeping environment for your child.
Make the Room Your Child’s Kingdom
Your child’s room is where a lot of their daily indoor activities will take place. You want their room to be somewhere they love being. That’s especially true at night when it’s time for them to sleep. By allowing your child to help design their room, you give them some say in the kingdom they want. For optimum sleep, you can allow them to pick a bed, quality and affordable mattress, and bedding that makes them want to spend time in bed at night. To save some bucks while doing this, keep an eye on the major seasonal mattress sales like, for example, this Memorial Day mattress sale.
Color Scheme
For children, in particular, colors have a great deal of influence over their moods. If you want to create a room environment that’s happy for playtime, you would choose colors like yellow and white. For sleep, the two best colors seem to be blue and green. Shades of blue and green tend to have a calming effect on children, often resulting in lower heart rate and anxiety. By the way, you absolutely want to avoid colors like red, orange and black.
Light Control
A child’s mind is particularly sensitive to light. Any exposure to light while trying to sleep will often interrupt a child’s rest. To prevent this from happening, you want to make your child’s sleeping environment as dark as possible. You should go as far as blackout curtains to eliminate any light from the outside. If your child has a fear of the dark, you can place nightlights out of the direct view of your child.
Remove the Clutter
A child’s psyche tends to adopt what’s going on in the child’s environment. If a child spends a lot of time in a cluttered environment, they are more apt to be disorganized and easily excited. If you want to create an environment that’s conducive to promoting sleep for your child, you need to help them keep their room clutter-free, especially closer to bedtime.
Create That “Snuggly” Feeling
Humans sleep better in a cooler environment. Yes, that likely applies to your child as well. If you aim to keep the room temperature cooler at bedtime, you can compensate for your child feeling cold with the proper bedding. If they have the proper quilt to provide warmth against the cool environment, it creates for your child that snuggly feeling you likely enjoyed when you were a child.
Remember, your child needs lots of sleep to promote health and good development. With that in mind, you should realize you spend to get your child’s room ready for sleep will likely come back to you in the form of a healthy child.