At Spacer, we are always so excited to hear about our community getting ready to welcome a new baby into their home. It’s such an exciting time. 

One of the delightful challenges, of course, is transforming your spare room into a baby’s room that is both stylish and safe for the little one. Because, although the little bundle of joy may not be mobile when you first bring them home, it’s always a good idea to prepare in advance. Before you know it, they’ll be crawling all over the place!

First, bring that room back to the basics

When you start with a blank slate, you can ensure that there won’t be anything in your baby’s room that is dangerous. Also, it will be much easier to create the design style that you want when you’re working with the bare minimum.

Now, this may be a big ask if you currently use your spare room for storage. But, it can be so liberating to start a new chapter of your life by getting rid of what you don’t need. And for the things that you want to hold onto, there is always the option of storage.

If you don’t have space in your garage, you might consider renting out a storage option through Spacer. There are so many spaces available on the site that you’ll be able to store your things close to home, which is, of course, ideal with a new baby. 

If your room clean turns into an entire house cleaning and you happen to have extra room in your home to spare, you can always become a Spacer host and rent it out, gaining some extra money in the process. 

Now that your space is wonderfully empty, you can start creating your dream baby room from scratch. 

Start with the paint. These days, you can find paints that have low or zero amounts of VOC, a toxic chemical released by most standard paints when they dry. Architecture & Design has a whole article on the the best non-toxic paint options, so that both mom and baby are safe during the painting process.

As far as color goes, choose whatever makes you feel the most calm and relaxed. This is going to be a room that you will spend a lot of time in, so it’s better to choose a color that you like instead of what’s traditional or trendy.

Make sure to paint the room before moving onto the stage of buying the baby essentials. After all, you don’t want all of those items in your way while you’re painting. 

Onto the essentials

Sure, it’s fun to pick out the right wall decorations and stuffed animals, but do yourself a favor and deal with the necessities first. You’ll see that the list of things you absolutely need is going to be long enough to fill the entire room, so don’t buy anything decorative just yet. Otherwise, you run the risk of the room looking and feeling busy.

A standard list of necessary items generally includes: 

• Crib

• Changing table

• Nursing chair

• Dresser

• Clothes hamper

• Diaper disposal bin

• Storage for bedding

• Storage for books 

• Baby monitor

• Night light

You’ll notice that everything on the list is enough to make the room feel pretty much complete. The only things left are some safety measures and, the fun part, decoration!

Let’s talk safety

Like we said, your newborn may not be getting into tricky situations yet, but this is still the perfect opportunity to make the baby room safe for when they start crawling. Here are a few simple changes that will make a huge difference:

• Baby gates – this is going to make it so much easier to keep an eye on the little one and keep them away from stairs or other dangerous parts of the house

• Take care of power cords – do your best to hide all cords or secure them firmly to the wall or floor

• Electric outlet covers – there are a lot of options when it comes to baby proof outlets. Some plug into the socket, some cover the entire outlet, some slide or pop open when you need to plug something in 

• Small objects, sharp objects, wobbly objects – think of it this way, if it’s not made for babies, it’s going to need to be altered or moved out of reach. Furniture that can topple, like bookshelves, should be mounted to the wall

• Windows – When babies are small, a simple fly screen is enough. But it’s a good idea to consider installing a window barrier for when they get to the climbing age. It may seem like a long way off, but better to get it out of the way early

Finally the fun stuff!

Now that you’ve handled all of the pressing things on the to-do list, it’s time for the fun part! What books are you going to put in the bookshelf? What wall art are you going to put up? What color do you want the bedding to be?

These are all the final touches on transforming your spare room into the perfect baby room. The baby is going to absolutely love their new home!