One of the main reasons I moved house last year was because of space.  In our old home, it was an open plan kitchen, dining and living room, which has its benefits don’t get me wrong, but it was a small space.  We just had a new baby and four months later found out there was another on the way so the clutter was going to get worse.

What I needed was a playroom, not just for the kids but somewhere I could sit at night when the kids were in bed and himself was in the sitting room watching more football.

I wanted something that was fun enough for the kids to enjoy playing during the day and also cosy at night for TV and a couple of candles.

A reasonably priced couch was first on the list.  I sat down at night for about 2 weeks checking every website I could, to get something comfortable and stylish, right size and colour to hide all the handprints…easy…yeah right but the hard work paid off!

This is what i found for only 445 including delivery and two pillows.  DFS always have great sales so keep an eye out!

We had a previous flat screen TV from our bedroom in our last house and in this house I was adamant the bedroom would be TV free.  Rather than have the tele free standing and risk one of the kids pulling it down on top of themselves, I wanted it mounted on the wall so I needed a stand for the sky box and rather than take up extra space I managed to merge it into a storage unit for all the toys!

IKEA IKEA IKEA…! I had the unit from my last home and as it was also bought in IKEA, I had numerous choices on what storage I would get to fit the unit, so I decided to go with the 3 C’s… Cheap, cheerful and colourful!  It hides clutter, holds the dvd player and sky box and an ideal place for a couple of candles and a bottle of wine.

Right, couch:check, Storage:check…. now for the decor.  Remember this is first and foremost a play room so there needs to be space to play… storage and seating is all you need.

As the children are very young, I wanted it as visual as possible.   Tiger is a great shop, it has loads of quirky pieces at really affordable prices.  I got a set of alphabet stickers for a euro where you can place everywhere to help kids learn and they won’t ruin the wall when you decide to change things around a bit.  In the corner you will see a paper hot air balloon, really simple but every child to come into the playroom loves that balloon and visually for the babies its a bargain for only €4!

Wall decals are also a great way of filling a blank wall with little effort if you ever wanted to change this around. These are available everywhere but I find ebay the best.  The choices you have are endless and shipping is really cheap. The only draw back is they can take a couple of weeks to be delivered.

Another great way of personalising a room is photographs.  As the kids are growing up so fast, they are changing everyday.  The best way to accommodate this is again… Ikea! Ikea picture ledges are a brilliant idea.  You can change photos around so easily without destroying the walls and as you can see here as well I have some name plaques and quirky signs which mixes things up a bit.

Here are some accessories you can use to decorate your playroom on a budget, that are available in shops right now.