5 Ideas of What to Put on Hard Floors for Babies to Play

My dream house came with beautiful hand scraped hardwood floors.  However, fast forward a few years later to having a baby and the floors are not so practical. My sweet little baby needed a softer area to play.  Now that he has mastered rolling, crawling, cruising, walking, and running, we've learned some things along the way about making our house a little warmer for him. In today's post, I'll focus on what we did to make our hard floor better for our baby.  Of course, our tips changed over time because our baby's skillset changed with time.

What to Put on Hard Floors for Babies to Play

1. Foam mat

We used a foam mat for a while. It was great until our baby learned to take it apart.  If you order an alphabet mat, that means that you are looking at 26 tiles and 26+ border pieces for them to tear apart that you'll have to keep putting back together.  We made a bigger mistake of buying a set where the letters come out too!  I eventually donated the mat because I couldn't keep putting it back together.  If I were to do it again, I would buy a foam floor mat like the one below since it has fewer pieces than our first floor mat.

2. Soft Blankets

Once our baby was bigger, we used some big blankets on the floor. You wouldn't want to do this for a younger baby due to SIDS risks, but when my son was older and I was sitting there playing with him, our soft blankets created a cozy play area.

3. Play mat

We bought a play mat with pretend roads and houses on it.  It didn't add much softness, but it was nice for him to play on it.

4. A mattress from our guest room.

At one point, when our son was big enough to know to avoid falling off of the edges, we put soft blankets on the floor and moved the mattress from our guest room into our living room.  We enjoyed playing on it.

5. ... And then he was two and we were over the need for a padded area to play

Finally, around age two, my son spent less time playing on the floor of our living room.  He usually sat on the couch to read books, sat at a table with chair to play, or ran into his room if he really had the urge to roll around on the floor.   So, we are out of the phase where our living room looks crazy with blankets, mats, and even a mattress.