Kid-friendly bathroom design
Designing bathrooms safe enough for kids and stylish enough for adults
The best laid plans of moms and dads often go awry once kids enter the picture. What was once a bathroom for two suddenly becomes a space for three or four or five. Moreover, these new users have drastically different needs than the adults who designed the spaces. Often parents or guardians will find that their carefully designed bathroom has to be updated to accommodate a child’s arrival, both in terms of safety and functionality.
It’s important for kids to stay safe and equally important for adults to stay sane. The good news is that there are a number of easy ways to make your bathroom more kid-friendly while maintaining the look you’ve worked so hard to achieve.
Anti-Slip
For most adults, a warm bath is an opportunity to indulge in a moment of relaxation and tranquility. But for young children, a tub of water is an invitation to splash about and run wild. In most cases this is little more than an annoyance for the adults who care for them, but special care must be taken to ensure that more serious accidents are avoided. Anti-slip bath surfaces, with their intrinsic traction-giving properties, go a long way in helping to keep these rambunctious young ones from suffering slips and falls.
These properties have in the past been attainted via adhesive tapes or plastic mats, which, though effective, are not aesthetically pleasing. These days, there are a number of materials such as Stonex® or Surfex® which are inherently anti-slip, giving your bathtub all the benefits of a slip-resistant base with none of the downsides.
(Pictured: Free-standing Surfex® bath in matt white from Roca’s Beyond collection)
Extra Storage
All those bathtub toys and superhero towels are great for the kids, but the last thing you want is to be tripping over them during your own private moments of relaxation. The solution can be summed up in three words: storage, storage, storage.
Vanity units are great ways to take advantage of space, as they add easily accessible drawers below the basin without occupying extra bathroom space. Mirror cabinets bring out a third dimension in the mirror, creating space for keeping small items such as toothbrushes, makeup and shaving equipment arranged. And perhaps the most straightforward solution is to add an auxiliary storage column, which can be installed anywhere and can handle pretty much anything. With the chaos of little ones running around, keeping things tidy and clutter-free is a must.
(Pictured: Roca’s Ona Unik vanity unit in matt grey with two drawers and in-countertop basin)
(Pictured: Round thermostatic shower column in brushed titanium black from Roca’s Even collection)
Thermostatic Mixers
Children are naturally inquisitive – a good thing in most scenarios, but potentially problematic where safety is concerned. One of the most common yet least acknowledged accidents to befall children in bathrooms is scalding from hot water. Thermostatic mixers avert this problem by maintaining a constant temperature set by the user, and featuring safety systems which prevent them from exceeding a certain heat level (38º Celsius, in many cases), helping to prevent burns. And because you don’t waste time searching for just the right temperature manually, thermostatic faucets help save water as well.
While there’s ultimately no substitute for basic bathroom safety practices, installing thermostatic mixer can drastically increase a bathroom’s safety.
For small children, safety is an abstract concept which often takes a backseat to curiosity and is frequently thwarted by accidents of all sorts. It’s important for adults to remember that everyday objects can be potentially dangerous to inexperienced users with short attention spans and low manual dexterity. In a bathroom which will be used by children, one can never be too careful – or too organized.
