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Guest Post:  Designing a Bedroom for Children With Allergies

Guest Post: Designing a Bedroom for Children With Allergies

With so many people suffering from allergies, creating a space that minimizes exposure to allergens is essential.  If you have allergies in your family, check out today’s guest post by Stephanie Staszko for tips on minimizing allergens in your child’s bedroom.

When it comes to good mental and physical health, a good night’s rest is vital. Children who sleep less than eight hours a night often find themselves having difficulty with retaining new information, metabolism and weight problems, mood swings and exhaustion as well as immune-deficiency related illnesses.

Children with dust allergies may struggle to breathe easily during the night and as a result, find that they are tired at school, becoming cranky and struggling in class. As a parent, you can help your child to sleep soundly by ensuring their bedroom is as dust free as possible. Here are some ideas on how to improve your child’s sleep quality whilst sprucing up the bedroom too.

mattress and bedding

Photo courtesy House to Home

Bedding Matters

Many children suffer from allergies that can be exacerbated by sleeping on a standard mattress; often mattresses can become home to dust mites, irritating the skin and causing extreme discomfort and respiratory problems. With Anti-allergy mattresses, the primary causes of these reactions are taken out of the equation. Chemical-free and anti-dust mite mattresses are created specifically to meet the needs of these users and combat their allergies by eliminating the allergen, so those stuffy-nosed nights can easily become a thing of the past!

Substitute your child’s pillow for an anti-allergen one too, and if they find memory foam comfortable then you could also consider giving them a memory foam pillow. Continually washing and changing your child’s bedding can also help as it prevents the build-up of dust within the fibres of the bedding. Alternating different sets of bedding can also help to revitalise the appearance of the room as well, choose a few different sets to change so you always have clean ones to put on.

Store Soft Toys Safely

Soft toys in children’s bedrooms can cause clutter at the least, but for children who suffer from a dust allergy, it can also worsen their symptoms. You can easily store the soft toys away in storage boxes which wheel under the bed, or if your child insists on having them around whilst they sleep then put up some shelves for the toys to sit on. This will help to de-clutter the bedroom and relieve your child’s allergies a little. Try to wean the allergy sufferer off sleeping with lots of soft toys and limit them to one favourite to reduce the extremity of the dust allergy. If they share the bedroom with a sibling then apply the rule to both children so the allergy sufferer can sleep easily.

Child bedroom wood floor

Photo courtesy House to Home

Switch to Laminate Flooring

No matter how much you vacuum a carpet, it still attracts dust and mites. Laminate flooring (and other hard surface floor coverings like wood or tile) however, is quite easy to keep clean every day and doesn’t attract dust mites as much as a carpet would. If you’re concerned the flooring would be too hard and cold for your child or too much of an ‘adult’ appearance for a youngster’s room then you can always add a machine washable children’s rug in a bold and colourful design to cheer the flooring up a little! Just make sure to wash the rug every week along with the bedding to ensure dust is kept to a minimum.

Dust allergies are often taken lightly, but can really affect a child’s quality of life. If they share a bedroom with a sibling it can also affect their sleep too. By regularly cleaning and vacuuming as well as incorporating techniques mentioned in this post, you should hopefully make the bedroom a place for them to both breathe and sleep easy.

Stephanie Staszko writes for bathroom website Bathshop321 which sells furniture, accessories and suites for family homes. Steph wrote this article from personal experience of suffering from dust allergies badly as a child; the piece is not intended to be professional medical advice.

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2 Responses to Guest Post: Designing a Bedroom for Children With Allergies

  1. […] 0 CommentsToday’s guest post is from Stephanie Staszko, who also wrote an article about designing for children with allergies.  In this week’s article, learn some ways to make your home feel larger simply by taking […]

  2. Teri this is amazing. We’ve moving house soon and my son has always suffered endlessly with his allergies. So I just wanted ot say a massive thanks hopefully we’ll get him back to 100% health in no time.

    Great site, and great advice.

    All the best
    Jon

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