How To Set Up a Perfect Montessori Bedroom

If you want to implement Montessori in your home and create a beautiful, inviting, and orderly bedroom environment, this blog post is for you! 

What is a Montessori Bedroom?

A Montessori bedroom is a simply prepared environment for young children. There is a low bed, called a floor bed where the child can move on and off easily when they want. A soft rug may cover the floor of this room.  There is a wardrobe or closet prepared with low drawers, a low-hanging rod, and a chair for them to sit on to get dressed. A Montessori nursery will have an area designated for feeding the baby with a comfortable chair with the necessary pillows and blankets nearby.

You may find a low shelf with some Montessori toys and possibly a beautiful space prepared for an infant to view their Montessori baby mobiles. The entire room is available to the child for exploration, sleep, movement, and play. Safety has been considered in every way and the adult has taken the necessary steps to ensure that the child is free to explore safely. While I do think a Montessori bedroom is a magical thing just like I have described here, let’s dive into some of the areas and what that practically will look like for someone hoping to set up the perfect Montessori bedroom for their child. 

The Floor Bed

A Montessori bedroom will often have a floor bed. This is either a mattress on the ground or on a low frame. A floor mattress sets the tone of a Montessori bedroom. It is the one item in the room that conveys the idea that we are offering our child freedom of movement. An authentic Montessori-style bedroom will and can allow for this freedom when the adult has done the work to carefully prepare a safe environment for a baby or young child.

I have many blog posts that go into greater depth and details about the floor bed and how you can successfully use them with a singleton or twins! I found a Montessori floor bed to be a great way to develop healthy sleep habits for my twins. We have used a twin-size mattress on the floor and it has worked great! We use a white noise machine as part of our sleep time routine and it has helped immensely with sleep. 

Dressing Area

An area prepared for the child to get dressed, or be dressed is part of a Montessori bedroom. This will look different at different ages as their level of independence grows. Let me share a little bit about how the dressing area functioned in our Montessori bedroom during infancy and toddlerhood. You may keep a dirty clothes hamper in the room, or elsewhere. We keep ours right outside of their bedroom door. This way I can do laundry at times when they are sleeping. 

As an Infant

In the beginning, for at least the first 6 to 9 months we needed to set up a dressing area that allows us to change and dress the baby with ease. Depending on your comfort level, you could set up a diaper changing station on the floor somewhere. Alternatively, you can set up a changing table if that is a more practical way for you to change your child’s diaper. Having a space designated for diaper changes is ideal to help orient your baby to the world around them.

In a perfect world, you would have a dressing area in the nursery where you also do diaper changes. However, you may find that initially, you don’t have this set up in their bedroom, but in your bedroom for the first few months when they are sleeping in your room.

We set up our Montessori wardrobe in the nursery before our twins were born and used it to hold all of their clothing. I would store larger sizes and additional items in their larger bedroom closet. I liked storing their clothes in their bedroom as it seemed logical. We then set up a few diaper changing areas in our home for greater convenience.

Older Baby and Toddler

A great way to create autonomy and foster independence is by preparing a space that gives children the opportunity to do things for themselves, like putting on their clothes. A Montessori bedroom will use child-sized furniture or find creative ways to adjust furniture and closets to make them accessible to the child. I transformed a traditional dresser into a beautiful Montessori dresser that now is perfect for our twin toddler’s bedroom. Aside from sleeping, a large part of the time we spend in our Montessori toddler bedroom is spent working on dressing. We use a dressing chair that sits near the mirror and their wardrobe. My boys can open their low drawers to choose their clothes. I set up 2 hanging rods inside the closet portion of the dresser so that I can set out choices on the bottom but also use it for storage for all of their other clothes. 

The child’s independence is the most important thing when setting up a dressing area. Having it orderly so they can work towards choosing their outfit independently. The journey towards independence is gradual, but it starts from the moment they are born. How we do these tasks with and for a child can be done with respect. We can offer them meaningful ways to be involved in the process in small ways until one day they will be able to do it all on their own! If you are looking for Montessori wardrobe options check out this blog post for some recommendations and DIY options!

Feeding Area

A Montessori bedroom should feel cozy, warm, and inviting. You will need a comfortable place to sit and feed your baby. As they grow older, you will still likely enjoy having a chair where you can sit and read board books together. This could transition to be a little reading nook for your toddler with a cozy small chair for them or some comfy pillows. Near the feeding area, you may have some soft lighting and a small table to set your beverage. In the beginning, this bedroom is very much for you as well as your baby. Make sure to make it function for your needs as well.

Play or Movement Area

There are many different ways to go about setting up play areas in your home and you may find that the bedroom is not the only place that you prepare a few age-appropriate toys on an open shelf. In our home environment, we have a small shelf that will hold 4 to 5 different toys in the boys’ bedroom and a low forward-facing bookshelf. I find it a good idea to limit the amount of options available in this space because it also is the space where I want to develop healthy sleep habits and sometimes too many toys can distract from that goal. 

A pull-up bar could be part of a Montessori bedroom for an infant. However, you could also set this up somewhere else in the home. It would be helpful when it comes to diaper changes because it allows you to do a standing diaper change with your baby. We chose to put it in another area of the home that we spent more time in. 

Low Shelf with Toys

Giving your child easy access to a low shelf or a small basket with a few toys is perfect. As they get older, this will naturally change over time. We can limit what toys are out by doing a toy rotation. This is an easy way to keep the room orderly as well as keep the interest high by rotating toys. In a Montessori classroom, the shelves are prepared with materials. The shelves are open to offer freedom of choice and visual order and to aid in making independent choices. We can replicate this concept in our homes but with toys and materials. 

Books

Having some front-facing bookshelves or a small basket of books in the bedroom at the child’s level is a nice touch. For babies, find durable board books. Alternatively, you could find wooden or cloth books. 

Baby Mobiles

The Montessori baby mobiles are a perfect way to add purposeful activity for newborns, beauty, and elegance to a Montessori room. You can set up a movement area and set up the mobiles in that area. I would recommend setting this area up in a frequently used space in your home if possible. It will make it easier to use more frequently. The baby mobiles are used during the first 3 months of life. Check out this blog post for details on all of the Montessori baby mobiles. Try out this DIY Munari mobile or the DIY Octahedron mobile to prepare for your baby. 

How to Prepare a Cozy and Beautiful Montessori Bedroom

When preparing a bedroom we want to prepare it to be a cozy place where a child feels peaceful resting. We can add soft lighting, beautiful artwork, different colors, and textures through natural fibers that we bring into the space. Montessori bedrooms may look very minimalistic and that is simply because we want to prepare an orderly environment with just the essentials. Order and beauty are such important Montessori principles. 

Lighting

I may have a lamp problem, but I’m okay with it. Lamps can do so much for a room! They bring warmth, softness, and light to the space. Lamps can also bring about a lot of character and style to a room depending on the kind of lamp you get. The first thing I do in the morning when I go into my boys’ room is turn on their lamps. It offers a slow way to wake up, it isn’t harsh but is still very effective lighting. When putting lamps in an environment with a baby or toddler make sure to ensure safety. Use wall outlet boxes and cord covers. Make it out of reach so they can’t pull it down on themselves. 

Natural light is another great thing to have but this is likely more out of your control. I loved setting up our Movement area near the window so they got some great vitamin D exposure. Natural light is great in a bedroom as well. 

Artwork

You will want to hang artwork at your baby or toddler’s eye level. This will allow them to enjoy the artwork. Consider artwork that depicts objects in real life and things of the natural world. Younger children, under the age of 6, are learning so much about the world and we can offer beautiful concrete artwork that interests them to learn more about the world around them. 

Simple and Orderly

Keep it to the essentials when preparing a Montessori bedroom. Use baskets to separate different types of clothing in drawers. Add a beautiful basket to store objects of common use like diaper rash cream and lotion. Baskets can be a great way to keep order as well as enhance beauty in a space. Think through how you will store the additional sizes of clothing if you are starting your Montessori bedroom with a baby. They grow so quickly and you will want to be able to have a simple and orderly system for storing clothing. Clean the space regularly, especially once you have a mobile baby who will be moving around on the floor. 

Safety Considerations

You must ensure that a Montessori bedroom is safe. I have a whole blog post about how I baby-proofed our Montessori nursery, check it out here. Some things to keep in mind are that all outlets are covered and any outlet being used has an outlet cover box. Use cord covers to secure any loose cords to the wall. A video monitor is a must in my mind, especially if you are using a floor bed. This allows you to see what is going on in your child’s bedroom. 

Conclusion

Now that you see all of the different elements of a Montessori bedroom, enjoy the time preparing. Preparing an environment to meet a child’s needs is big work and can take some time. If you are looking for more inspiration on implementing Montessori in your home check out my YouTube channel where I share about bringing Montessori into the home through a Montessori homemaking approach. I’d love to have you join my community over there!