The Easiest Ways to Make Your Child’s Bedroom Less Scary at Night

A child’s bedroom doesn’t have to be scary, but sometimes a strange sound or unusual shadow can overwhelm a child’s imagination, leading to insomnia, anxiety, and nightmares. It can also mean a rough night for you if their cries for help wake you up or demand to make room in your own bed when they are afraid to go back to sleep.

Although we cannot guarantee that we will be able to get rid of your child’s nightmares. there are a few things you can do to make their room less scary.

Check your mirrors

It feels like every horror or fantasy movie has a tense scene with a reflective surface. These pieces of furniture are supposed to help us check out our looks before heading out into the world, but they are often used as a plot device to show us something scary. One glance at a roaming shadow before bedtime can take your child’s mind off the dark place, meaning you’ve got a long night ahead of you.

Sarah Jubb of Happy Beds recommends keeping mirrors and other shiny surfaces away from your child’s bed so they can feel at ease before bed.

Consider removing wall decor

My eldest son loves the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but most of the art in the show is of grunts and other miscellaneous bad guys with big sharp swords and nunchucks. It looks cool during the day, but when the lights go out, the weapons the villains wield can take on a more menacing look.

Parents recommend replacing this type of image with something more soothing, like family photos or drawings of your children. Another suggestion is to decorate with something cozier: for example, when my family moved to a new house, we used these glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling and the children’s beds. Not only did it fire up their imagination (in a good way), but it also lit up the room, which brings us to the next item on our list.

Light things up

At first I hesitated to put a night light in my boys’ room, because many of them shine too brightly. The variety of plug-ins will be bright enough to keep them awake , and they will create weird and frightening shadows on the wall, which is something we’re obviously trying to avoid.

Like any modern parent, we found the solution to our lighting problem in the most obvious place: Bluey. The protagonist of the popular Australian cartoon has a Himalayan salt lamp by her bed. When we installed it in our boys’ room, it created a soft glow that spread throughout the room, filling it with soothing colors.

You could achieve the same success with a simple garland around the perimeter of the room, which is both festive and soft enough not to disturb their sleep.

Keep your bed away from windows

Returning for a moment to the topic of horror films, they also do no good for windows – there is always something creepy hiding on the other side, and at night they can seem threatening to a child, especially when their bed is directly under him. one.

Jubb suggests keeping your child’s bed away from windows and even recommends following Feng Shui principles and placing it diagonally from the bedroom door. They can see it when they fall asleep, which gives them a sense of security.

Behind the scenes

Floor-length curtains are the perfect place to disappear while playing hide-and-seek, but when the lights go down, your kids might think someone or something is hiding behind them. Jubb says half-size curtains or blinds can help alleviate this fear, because blinds have never scared anyone.

Turn on (white) noise

No room is soundproof, and sounds and conversations from your living room can seep into your child’s room, keeping him awake and scared of what he thinks he is hearing. A white noise generator is an indispensable assistant in our home. The gentle sounds of the rain not only soothe them, but also protect them from the high-pitched screams from the horror movie you’re watching in the living room.

clean their room

Chaos and fear are linked, so if a room gets messy during the day, clutter can cause anxiety when it gets dark. Parents say that keeping and storing toys, clothes, and other items will result in less stimulation caused by a prolonged mess.