Kids Bedroom Furniture Shopping

If you’re in the market for kids bedroom furniture there are a few things to keep in mind. You’ll want to start with the most obvious things, gender and age. There is a vast difference between baby furniture, toddler furniture, and kid’s furniture. Some baby furniture will start out as a crib that can transition into a toddler bed. Some kid’s bunk beds can be set up as either two stand alone beds or on top of each other as bunks. Let’s examine the differences between all kids furniture.

The first thing you’ll want to take into consideration when buying kids bedroom furniture is the age of your child. Typically furniture stores will have different sections for kids furniture depending on age. Let’s be honest, if you’re in the market for baby cribs you don’t want to be distracted by teen’s bedroom sets. Assuming you’ve identified which category your child’s age group falls, you’ll easily be able to begin your shopping experience.

The next step is to know which gender you’re shopping for.  Buying for kids is different from buying for yourself.  Kids furniture is tons different from sectional sofas.  Typically boys rooms are themed in blue with sports, sail boats, dinosaurs, or animals. Girls rooms are almost exclusively pink themed with princesses, flowers, and cute stuffed animals. Some people choose to not find out the gender of their child during pregnancy, opting for the surprise at birth. If this is the case then you’ll want to buy gender neutral themes and sets. Gender neutral colors include green, orange, and yellow. Add other things that both boys and girls enjoy. Sea life themes are the easiest and offer a variety of items to help decorate the room.

Now that you’ve locked down the age and gender of the child, the next step in purchasing kids bedroom furniture is budget. Believe it or not, you could spend more for a kids room than an adult bedroom set. Between beds, dressers, shelving, end tables, desks, rugs, wall design, paint, trim, pictures, posters, lamps and lighting, you can spend literally thousands of dollars. You’ll want to have a defined budget before you start shopping. Stick to this budget. You can easily get wrapped up in shopping and end up completely blowing the roof off what you had originally intended to spend if you aren’t careful.

We’ve identified the kid’s age, gender, and budget, the next step is what style you want to go with. Do you like antique, classic, modern, contemporary or a mixture of them all. I recommend picking one style and sticking to it. This way the room will have a unified feel and won’t seem cluttered with a mish mash of random pieces. The color scheme is another thing that should have a lot of attention. I suggest that you pick your bedding or crib liner and build the color pallet around that. Your wall paint, rug, curtains, and other little details will all depend on the original pallet you choose so be sure it’s something you like.

Other things to take into consideration are brand and quality. When you shop for kids bedroom furniture be sure to speak with a knowledgeable sales person. They should be able to give you important information concerning quality reports for each piece. Remember, kids furniture isn’t the same as adult furniture. A popular brand that you’d buy for yourself may be very low on the quality scale for kids. Lots of children’s furniture makes have been working in this niche for decades and would be completely unknown to you if you have never purchased children’s furniture. This is very important to keep in mind.

Let’s figure out what your child will need. The obvious things include a bed and dresser. Everything else is secondary and completely optional depending on the space you have to work with. Put the bulk of your budget in these two items. The bed includes the mattress and either bedding or liners. Kids have accidents on beds all the time. Beds that are stain resistant and that have a layer of plastic covers are usually the best. For infants a firmer mattress is usually suggested. It’s another good idea to purchase a bed or crib that can convert to something larger as your child grows. This will save you from having to purchase new beds every two to three years. As for the dresser, it’s all about space. Don’t skimp on quality of the dresser. You’ll be opening those drawers more than your own. Cheap dressers have cheap drawers that easily break.

The accessories in the room are also completely up to you. What I like to do is again plan the accessories around the bedding or crib liner that you’ve chosen. Often you’ll find that the manufactures of the bedding has a full series of additional items that you can buy for the set. This includes lamps, wall decoration, curtains, stuffed animals, and even light switch covers. Be sure to not go overboard with the accessories. Kids grow up fast and may not like monkey’s or sea turtles for very long. If you’ve spent a lot of money accessorizing the room it’ll be tough making the decision to change.

Quality is very important with every decision. The good thing is you should be able to recoup a significant amount of the money you spent when you turn around to sell the furniture. Like a used car, the better the quality, the more it’ll hold its resale value. There are many ways you can sell used kids bedroom furniture. Baby consignment stores, garage sales, ebay, craigslist, and consignment sales are the best ways. If you buy the furniture on sale originally you may even make money when you go to sell them.

I highly suggest planning your shopping for kids bedroom furniture around major holidays. Retail stores look for any reason to have a sale. I happened to pick up a crib and dresser for a third of the retail cost just because I was shopping on President’s Day weekend. As crazy as that sounds, it’s something to take into consideration. You could pick up some top of the line furniture at the same cost of similar low end items. Good luck shopping!