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When searching for a children’s playhouse, you might be wondering whether to go for one of the many plastic options, or go for an outdoor wooden playhouse. Here are the main areas you need to consider when making your choice:
Plastic playhouses can be used indoors or outdoors
While it is possible to build a wooden playhouse indoors, this isn’t recommended unless you plan to make it a permanent fixture of the house. You almost certainly wouldn’t want one on the carpet due to the high weight and the potential for the wood to tear the fabric.
Plastic playhouses can be built indoors, especially smaller ones, and then disassembled later if you wish. The smaller models can also be lifted up, perhaps between two people, making them conveniently portable when you want to change the location.
However, when you put multiple children together, play can become very high energy, and that is better taken outdoors. After all, part of the appeal of a playhouse is a way to get kids spending more time outdoors.
If you’re looking for a children’s outdoor playhouse, wood is very much worthy of your consideration.
Wooden playhouses look better and can be customised
There’s something to be said for the rustic qualities of a classical wooden Wendy house. With their peaked roofs and Georgian windows, they look adorable in that beautifully old fashioned way. With the ability to paint them whichever colours you wish, they’re sure to match any garden and encourage your child’s self expression.
Just look at this pirate-themed playhouse, decorated by one of our customers.
While plastic playhouses are available in a range of vibrant colours, these are fixed. There is no ability to adorn the playhouse with custom decorations or to change the colour scheme. Additionally, the colours may fade with time, and they can look out of place in a lot of gardens and homes.
There is also the impact this has on the play itself. When kids want to pretend that they have a house of their own, whether it’s to play with their dolls or to make it their superhero lair, a wooden playhouse simply feels more real.
Plastic playhouses are cheaper
At their smallest, plastic playhouses can be bought from below £100, whereas you would be unlikely to find a new wooden playhouse at that price point. However, the size of these would most likely be for children at around toddler age with not much room to move in them.
For a playhouse that your children will enjoy up to age 6 and beyond, and with room for multiple children to play together, you may want to invest in a larger unit, and this will require at least a few hundred pounds.
It might surprise you how affordable a long-lasting wooden playhouse is. Take a look at our cheap wooden playhouses.
Wooden playhouses are more durable and are easier to repair
Sometimes kids play too roughly, and toys get broken. This can easily include their playhouse, if they start jumping or throwing things. If play becomes too energetic, plastic will be the first to become cracked, whereas wood will take effort beyond the strength of children to significantly damage.
Furthermore, when a plastic playhouse is damaged, it is much more difficult to find replacement parts, as they are generally not sold individually. With a wooden playhouse, on the other hand, a piece of wood from your local DIY store should be enough to patch up any damage.
In terms of the lifespan of these buildings, wooden playhouses do require some maintenance. Wood that is kept outdoors requires annual treatment in order to not rot from taking on rainwater, or becoming infested with insects. As long as this treatment is kept up, our wooden children’s playhouses are guaranteed to last at least 10 years.
A pressure-treated wooden playhouse removes this maintenance requirement for the first several years of its life, due to being manufactured with protection already embedded deeply into the timber fibres. With pressure treatment, our playhouses are guaranteed against rot, decay and insect infestation for 15 years.
Broken plastic can also be sharp, becoming a potential hazard, which brings us to our next point…
Are plastic or wooden playhouses safer?
All commercially sold play houses should be certified for child safety. This means children won’t be able to accidentally injure themselves through normal use. Doors are designed to not be able to trap little fingers, ladders are anti-slip, raised areas have safety rails, and windows are made of shatterproof styrene rather than glass.
These safety requirements also apply to wooden playhouses, and all of ours are certified to EN71 European Safety Standards.
But what about splinters? This can easily be avoided by sanding down the wood in all the areas the children are likely to touch, and this is a step the manufacturers recommend.
Conclusion
Plastic playhouses win on convenience, as they are easier to put together, require little to no maintenance, and even larger units can be disassembled to be moved.
However, wooden playhouses are more heavy duty, look more pleasing, and are a generally higher quality building. Along with being easier to repair if anything breaks, wooden playhouses win on quality.
