Schools’ Guide to Nursery Playground Surfacing and Safety
What key considerations should you have when planning out your choices for your new nursery playground or EYFS area? Designing a safe space that your students will enjoy can be tough. That’s why our experts are here to help guide you through your decisions to optimise your play space with safe, creative play design appropriate for young children.
Creative Designs for Childhood Play
Early years education is a space for children to explore their imaginations and make friends. To help inspire games that children can play together, choose from themed or game markings built into the playground surface. Sometimes, children need prompts to inspire their imagination for play. This is why some playground equipment is themed around a particular topic or place. A popular choice is a pirate or castle theme, with climbing towers designed with these themes in mind with flags or turrets.
For a fully immersive space to play and role-play with peers, the whole space should reflect the theme of the playground. Patterns in play flooring help build on children’s imaginations, providing extra support for games by creating imaginary obstacles and pathways to play on. A beach and ocean design on the playground with bright yellows and blues can inspire different kinds of play in different areas, or a river design cutting across the playground can create space for children to work together to imagine crossing it, building bridges, or jumping across.
As well as these markings that inspire wider creativity through free play and imagination, more traditional playground games also depend on surface design. Inlaid markings in rubber surfaces help create long-lasting games that do not fade, remaining bright and clear due to EPDM rubber used in our wet pour installations and wear pads for areas in need of extra protection.
Bright Colours Across Your Nursery Playground
Young children’s attention is naturally drawn to bright colours. For nursery-aged children especially, primary colours stand out because of the way developing eyes process light. This is why toys and clothes for children tend to be in vibrant and bright colours. So why not extend this vibrant, colourful theme into all areas of play?
Our EPDM rubber surface installations use virgin true-colour granules that provide long-lasting colour with 20 shades available as well as unique blends on request.
Clean, Safe Surfaces
In nurseries, play occurs all around the playground, a lot of which occurs on the floor as they crawl and sit. This means that surfaces need to be free from toxins and contaminants and must also be easy to clean. For extra safety, we also recommend regular inspections to identify any hazardous contaminants or cracks and faults in your surface to prevent accidents and existing problems become exacerbated over time.
Having worked on school or nursery playground projects and public parks across the UK, we know how quickly play areas can become messy and muddy as children enthusiastically play and run around. Therefore, we have designed our surfaces to be easy and quick to clean. Our rubber surfaces on require semi-regular sweeping and low-pressure hosing to remove mud and dirt. The permeable design of our surfaces ensures that the water from washing does not remain on the surface to create puddles or a slipping hazard.
Over time some surfaces, particularly traditional SBR wet pour can produce a black dust known as ‘Carbon Residue’ that can stain skin and clothes as well as pose health risks if ingested. EPDM does not produce this by-product because it is treated with a PU binder for UV stability and high resistance and tensile strength.
Safe Surfacing Textures
The texture of the surface is important to prevent slipping. Surfaces should be tested for slip-proofing to help keep the playground safe. Therefore our surfaces are tested to achieve BS 7188 (1998) standards, limiting slip risks. This allows children to run around and play to their hearts’ content without risks of injury.
While slip resistance is key to avoiding accidents, larger rubber chippings or loose-fill play bark with high slip-resistance can pose choking hazards for young children. Without appropriate supervision, children may pick up and attempt to swallow the loose chippings that come loose from surfaces. We, therefore, recommend finer rubber crumb surfaces for nursery playgrounds, avoiding these issues as rubber play bark surfaces may deteriorate over time if not given the appropriate upkeep.
Do you Need New Surfacing for your Nursery Playground or EYFS Play Area?
Our expert installers have 20 years of experience in installing outdoor and indoor playgrounds across the UK. With our premier surfaces, creative designs, and high-quality customer service, contact us today for your next playground project. Request a free quote, or a callback on our contact page form, or contact us at 01564 742811. We can’t wait to hear from you!
