Create your music room
If you have a house with a spare room and you don’t know what to do with it, you might want to consider creating a “music room“: it’s a very important space in the house where each member of the family can go practice, rehearse, or just enjoy listening to music and practice music time. I grew up in a house where both my parents were musicians (my dad is a composer, my mom a singer), so of course we had a specific room that was intended only for music. What if you don’t have a spare room? Oh no problem, there’s no need to live in a villa to have the music room! In fact, it can just be what I call a “music corner“: when me and my husband moved in our home 4 years ago, we didn’t had any spare room, so we decided to use a section of our living room where I do everything that involves my music activity.
The music room
Let’s see few tips to create your Music Room, even if it’s just a corner!
Grab all your music instruments and throw them in here. Find a proper location for them, as some instruments are very sensitive to drafts, humidity and extreme temperatures.
Let the light in: the more windows the room has, the better; the power of natural light has a long list of health benefits, from the way our bodies work on a daily baisis to our mental and physical well-being. If you or your kids are gonna practice in this room for hours, artificial and neon lights are gonna be the worst enemy.
Soundproofing your room in the right way can get very expensive. If you’re ok with all the loud sounds coming from there, then you don’t need a thing; instead, if you leave in an apartment or you have your toddler who can’t sleep because your older son is practicing drums, then you’ll probably need to soundproof the room with professional wall’s acoustic foam panels (you can choose between the black ones specific for studio, or the stylish ones for home). If you’re on a budget don’t worry, people have become creative on how to cover walls in different materials, look here!
Create a space that is breathable, accessible to everybody: filling the Music Room with too much furniture will only make it smaller and chaotic (especially if you already have lots of instruments or music equipment in it). Instead, if you only have one or two instruments, you can think about adding one or two pieces of furniture, depending on how much space you have available. I love bookcases, especially the built-in, that offer a very good solution on where to store all the music books, cds or vinyls; I also like rotating bookshelf. For the seating, I don’t reccomend placing couches or armchairs, as they take a lot of space; instead, you can try using a storage bench (placed against the wall) or a chair that is appropriate to play your instrument.
Set up the floor: doesn’t matter if you have carpet or parquet, the music room is always better with rugs and mats, possibly with some artistic design or some odd geometric figures. A good idea is to have pillows on the floor as well, especially if the room is used by children.
Decorating and painting the walls with light colors will help focusing more and feel the space bigger and open. Use few wall shelves for extra storage (I like wood shelves) and hang your instruments with wall hanger (in case you have guitars, or violins). If it’s a room dedicated to young children, you might want to place music design wall stickers, funny music themed canvas or even a blackboard. For art and crafts object ideas, have a look to my Etsy shop.
How about a music corner?
If you don’t have availability of rooms, a dedicated space in your house will work just fine: let’s see how to create what I call a “Music corner”!
Separate your music corner from the rest of the house: your music corner still needs to be quiet and secluded, a place specifically intended for your musical activieties only. I used folding room dividers or separating screens.
Make it comfortable: since it’s probably gonna be a tight space, you will need a smart seating solution, like pouf pillows or stools. In case young kids are using it, you can purchase also toddler chairs and…more pillows!
Think clever, as objectively you can’t have too much furniture or too much decor here. You can still hang instruments on the wall, but for the ones you can’t hang on the wall you will need to place them strategically. You can still use stickers or canvas to decorate your wall, but I would strongly suggest to use also some green: plants can give the illusion to be in an open space, even if the space you are in is small and limited.
Watch for safety: if you have little kids roaming around the house, then you’ll need to take some precautions wherever and whenever is possible: always make sure they’re supervised and that all those delicate instruments are inside a case or highly hanged on a wall; make sure that bigger instruments like double bass, or heavy keyboards, or big percussions are accessible to younger children, but at the same time are safely secured; if you have electrical instruments like electric guitar, bass, microphones and other electric equipment like amp, speakers or mixer, just make sure to organize them so that they won’t be a hazard.
