Children love a sense of adventure and even if this fun begins just a few yards from your home in a children’s playhouse, the addition of a few accessories and a complete decoration of the playhouse will add to your children’s enjoyment.

There is a difficult decision ahead. Do you decide to decorate and accessorise the garden playhouse yourself, as a surprise for your children, or do you include them in almost all of the decisions so that their designer garden playhouse exactly suits their fashion and style?

Timber playhouses are like miniature wooden cottages

It is essential to get into the minds of your children to see how the children’s playhouse should be finished. At early ages, children enjoy replicating situations they have seen in their parents’ home or places they have visited. Definitive areas in your playhouse can become a kitchen, a woodworking area and a doctor’s surgery or whatever is your children’s fun and entertainment.

Timber playhouses are available in a range of sizes and styles and are usually much larger than the plastic playhouses that are on the market. Being made of timber, they need treating against potential water and weather damage. Luckily this means that the timber needs painting which is a great opportunity for your children to choose a selection of colours to decorate their playhouse, giving it an individual feel. How you balance the outside colours of the children’s paint choice against the rest of your garden might lead you to a difficult conversation with your kids.

Making boy and girl choices

Trying not to place your children in gender specific roles, the majority of little girls still prefer the garden playhouse to look more like a house or a shop, with a generous sprinkling of pink everywhere. You can tone this down by using pale pinks, rather than the bright options. If you’re going to surprise your children and paint the garden playhouse yourself, a neutral colour like yellow can be most effective as well. You can always keep the most vivid pinks for inside the playhouse.

Boys usually prefer green, red or pale blue. If you’re able to paint the garden playhouse with your boy’s favourite games in mind, this will certainly lead to them wanting to play outdoors and in the fresh air more often. Where you allow them to play aggressive games with toy guns, you might like to attempt to paint a camouflage selection on the outside, which should match in well with the colours of your garden

For the inside of the timber playhouse

Carpeting your garden playhouse can always provide a soft landing which is preferable to damaged or splintered wood. Because of the sizes involved, it’s easy to purchase off cuts from carpet stores or you may choose to pull together carpet tiles which are easier to substitute when accidents occur. Always buy more that you need so replacements are readily at hand.

Pink frilly curtains for girls or Superman curtains for boys can easily be added to the playhouse.

The only difficulties you are likely to face is when you have both boys and girls in your family and you will need to find a happy medium as you decorate and accessorise your timber playhouse. If the garden playhouse is big enough, you could decide to divide the different areas inside, but in the long run your children will bring their own individual character to your children’s playhouse, by adding accessories over the course of time.