Castle Playroom: How to Create A Magical Hideaway for Kids

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Children love to use their imaginations. What better place to act out scenes from their favorite fairy tales than a castle playroom under the stairs?

Last summer, I got lost for weeks in an enchanted world under our stairs. It started as blank white walls with a gray cement floor, but in my mind it was a magical forest full of friendly woodland animals leading the way to a medieval castle. I spent every spare moment I could down there painting, sewing and laying carpet to create a castle playroom for kids.

Castle Playroom: How to Create A Magical Hideaway for Kids - Kenarry.com

While I worked, I envisioned my boys playing in there for hours on end dressed as handsome princes and brave knights. I could see them defending the castle from masked marauders, fearsome dragons and plundering pirates. I imagined a day when I could send them downstairs to play after breakfast and not hear back from them until lunchtime when they would share tales of the adventures they had in their castle playroom. But this isn’t only about having fun. According to this article on Scholastic.com, imaginative play is key in developing social, language and thinking skills in children.

Castle Playroom: How to Create A Magical Hideaway for Kids - Kenarry.com

Anyone can create a castle playroom, like this, if you have a little imagination and a spare closet. Join me over the next several weeks, as I share how we turned an empty space under our basement stairs into a magical hideaway for kids, including:

Here’s a Sneak Peek of the Castle Playroom

Creating a Castle Playroom from a Blank Canvas

Our home is a large ranch-style house with a split level staircase to the basement.

Castle Playroom: How to Create A Magical Hideaway for Kids - Kenarry.com

From the main floor, you go down 7-8 steps, then there’s a flat platform followed by another 7-8 steps to the basement of our house.

Castle Playroom: How to Create A Magical Hideaway for Kids - Kenarry.com

The split level staircase created a small closet type space about four feet high, which many families would use for home storage.

Castle Playroom: How to Create A Magical Hideaway for Kids - Kenarry.com

When we finished our basement a few years ago, we knew we wanted to make the space under the stairs into a clubhouse or playroom of some sort. At the time, I was pregnant with our second child so we just had the space drywalled and sealed with primer. We left the gray cement floor unfinished and installed a door to match the rest of the interior doors in our basement. This allowed us to close off the space until I was finally ready to create the castle playroom. That, my friends, is where we start this adventure with a blank canvas:

Castle Playroom: How to Create A Magical Hideaway for Kids - Kenarry.com

Next in this series, I’ll take a look at where we got the idea and share another example of a magical hideaway for kids. If you’d like, you can subscribe to Kenarry to follow along with our castle playroom series over the next few weeks. You’ll get an e-mail in your in-box every time we publish a new castle playroom post, so you don’t miss a thing.

Castle Playroom: How to Create A Magical Hideaway for Kids - Kenarry.com

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See the entire Castle Playroom Series on Ideas for the Home by Kenarry®

What’s Next?

While you’re here, be sure to check out other kid ideas

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20 Comments

    1. Thanks, Carrie! We had so much fun playing down there during the long never-ending winter we had this year. It was great to have an “escape.”

    1. Aww, thanks PJ! I’m not much of a seamstress so that curtain was one of the most challenging parts of the whole project for me.

  1. Thank you! I love creative ideas for using wasted (or unused) space. My little ones would love something like this. I also have seen some great ideas for book nooks that would be fabulous!! Fun and darling ideas and post!

  2. Carrie, this is so cool and any child would absolutely love this! Thank you so much for sharing at Best of the Weekend – pinned! Hope you’re having a happy weekend and have a great week!

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