back to Preparing for Baby email this print this

Preparing for a new baby - Your baby's room

It’s very exciting to plan your baby’s room – and pregnancy is the right time to do it, too. When your baby arrives you’re likely to be way too busy or sleep-deprived to want to do much planning and decorating.

Don’t forget that your baby will go through many changes in the first two years, so try to make your plans with at least a two-year timeframe in mind, with safety and comfort for baby and parents guiding all the choices you will make.

Check out the Huggies Virtual Room Creator for some great ideas on how to set up your nursery – you can quickly and easily position furniture and change colours with a few mouse-clicks rather than hours of heavy shifting.

In an ideal world, your budget will stretch to a separate room for your baby, which you can decorate and make very safe. But not all babies get their own rooms, particularly if they are second or subsequent children – so the main aim is to make baby’s “zone” as safe and comfortable as possible and make sure that other easily-accessible areas of the room can be made baby-proof as soon as your baby becomes mobile.

Baby’s Zone

All those gorgeous fluffy toys, spinning mobiles, padded bumpers and colourful cot covers are very tempting in the shop, but when you are thinking about your baby’s room, think safety first.

See our Safety Guide to help inform your decisions about baby furniture and equipment before you go shopping.

A sparse cot is safest - nothing to smother or overheat your baby, nothing to climb on or tangle with.

If you’re dying to decorate, put up lots of colourful toys on a shelf, decorate with murals and wall-hangings and pile some teddy-bears on the floor.

Any paint that you use should be non-toxic – some paint shops that specialise in low-allergy paint, too.

Watch out for windows. Arrange for a safety lock to be fitted to any windows in your baby’s room. If the window is close to the floor, consider getting bars fitted. Curtains and blinds can pose a hazard if they have long cords - remove cords or shorten them way out of a young child’s reach.

Mobiles are lovely but it’s amazing how quickly those tiny arms grow. By about four months, many babies seem to have magic extender-arms that can reach twice their body-length.

Baby’s bedding should be natural, flameproof fabric, without any ties or cords or buttons that can come loose and cause strangulation or choking. Check window coverings and furniture upholstery using the same criteria – safety first.

Any rugs or mats should also be slip-proof and flameproof.

If you’re on a limited budget, baby’s linen and toys should be bottom of the list; it’s better to spend money on installing a smoke alarm in your baby’s room and getting an electrician to check the safety of power-points and making sure there is no reason for a dangerous cord snaking across the room.

Childproof covers on powerpoints are a great idea.

If you need to use heating in your baby’s room, be very careful. One of the safest types of heating is ducted heating. Any electric or gas heater should have a flameproof, heatproof guard.

Carer’s Needs

When you are setting up your baby’s room, don’t forget how important it will be for you (that includes mum, dad, grandparents and other carers) to be able to attend to her needs quickly and safely.

Equipment and ‘stuff’ that you need for changing baby’s bottom, cleaning up afterwards, dressing and feeding baby – all these need to be in arm’s reach (for you, but not baby!) so that you never have a reason to leave a squirming child unattended on a change table.

Kidsafe NSW reports that falls from nursery furniture are one of the most common causes of injury in children under two – and very often, those falls are from a change table. Your aim is to set up baby’s room so that you can keep one hand on your baby at all times when changing her nappy or dressing her.

Get a couple of shelves installed within arm’s reach of the change table - but out of baby’s reach – to hold nappies, wipes, creams, cloths, and a receptacle for wet and dirty nappies.

Try to arrange baby’s room so that everything you will need on a daily basis is easy and convenient to reach.

Organise a comfortable, low chair in your baby’s room for night feeds; ask a friend who has breastfed a baby to test it for you! You want to be able to get up easily while carrying a sleeping baby but still have good back support.

A dim night-light or lamp is great when making short visits at night. Make sure there are no power cords stretching around the room. If power points are in short supply, try a battery-operated night light – a couple of little cheap portable LED lights are much safer than extension cords.

By Fran Molloy – journalist and mum of 4

Buying for Baby