How can I Create a Pet-Friendly Family Room?

Pet-friendly family rooms are popular in many homes today. Pets are a part of the family. By choosing furnishings that holds up well to pets as well as providing pets with their own comfortable space, you can have a pet-friendly family room that also looks great.

If you have a cat or dog that sheds quite a bit, choose fabrics and rugs that blend in with your pet's coat color. Area rugs are usually a much better choice than wall to wall carpeting for a pet-friendly family room. It's easier to clean or replace an area rug than an entire carpet if pets soil it. Sofa covers help protect furniture from scratches and dirt and they can also be removed for washing.

Basically any type of pet beds can fit well into a pet-friendly family room. Again, try to find easy-care fabrics that work your pet's coat color to minimize the look of shedding fur. You can use fabric-lined foam pad pet beds or something cute and custom made. There are pet beds on the market today that also work for furniture such as an ottoman with a pet bed in it.

If you have a bird as a pet, you can incorporate a stylish bird cage into your pet-friendly family room. Perhaps you could create a tasteful jungle theme with plants and a color scheme of green and maybe a few bright accent colors. Or for a fun and whimsical jungle look, use jungle-patterned wallpaper and animal print throw pillows in the room.

For small pets such as guinea pigs, gerbils, hamsters and the like, you may want to place their cage on top of a table with storage possibilities to serve double duty in your pet-friendly family room. The shelves and/or drawers could hold baskets of DVDs and toys and games. Try not to place animal areas close to the television speakers, especially if your family tends to have the volume up fairly high.