When you’re expecting (and if you are, congratulations!), there’s no more exciting – or daunting – project than creating the perfect room for your little one. I recently went through this process myself, and I can tell you it was very time consuming, but very rewarding – not just for me, but for my now 7 1/2 month-old son. It’s a room you and she will be spending a lot of time in – playing, eating, sleeping, not sleeping, changing diapers, getting dressed (and undressed), etc. It needs to be beautiful and practical…and fun! Most importantly, the nursery is a room for your baby to enjoy as their own special place in the house.
This is a guide that is a direct result of the process I went through putting together my son’s room last summer. I will be following up with a separate post featuring our nursery, and a list of our sources. Comments and questions are welcome and encouraged!
Click on the page numbers below to navigate through the steps.
1.) Color Your World
For those who have decided not to know gender before the birth, please know that you’re not required to use green or yellow! There are so many other wonderful gender-neutral colors, like certain shades of orange, gray, aqua, and brown.
Once you have a main color defined, select two or three accent colors to complete your palette. Everything you select to adorn the nursery should have one or more of these colors in it. There are always exceptions to this rule, of course, but it is a good guide to pulling together a harmonious design.
2.) Choose a Theme
This step comes first for many people – there is no wrong order to going about this process, but the decisions you make in one step can affect your choices in another. For example, our nursery theme is “Yellow Submarine” – I’m a big Beatles fan. The very first thing I bought for the nursery was a large framed movie poster – I wanted to draw all of my inspiration from what was to be the focal point of the room, including the color on the walls. We picked Benjamin Moore’s “Sweet Pea,” which is a sort of lime green color that contrasted beautifully with the rich cobalt and midnight blues in the poster, and was similar to a print on John Lennon’s clothing.
3.) It’s Bedtime
Carousel Designs' Nursery Designer
Often, a bedding set or pattern will define a theme for a nursery (see above note regarding reordering these steps!). However, it doesn’t have to work this way – you need not limit yourself to the printed choices available in Babies ‘R’ Us, Buy Buy Baby, and the like. In fact, I would suggest considering simple solid colored crib sheets as the basis for your bedding ensemble. Solid colors offer design flexibility, as well as another benefit – they are less likely than busy patterns to distract your child while they’re trying to get themselves to sleep.
Another great option for crib bedding is going the custom route – selecting combinations of solid colors and patterns from a wide variety of fabric choices to get exactly what you are looking for. I ordered my bedding from Carousel Designs. You can use their great interactive design tool (complete with room mock-up and ability to color walls, furniture, floors, etc.) purchase coordinating nursery accessories, and create a registry! Best of all, the prices are actually quite reasonable and the quality is great (I can say this confidently after 7 1/2 months of heavy use).
4.) Find Functional Furniture
Romina's Ventianni Collection
Unlike other rooms in your house, furniture is typically not a focal point in the nursery. So you don’t have to spend a lot, or agonize too much about finding the cutest stuff available. Focus on quality (e.g. hard woods) and function over form, and invest in pieces that will grow with your child. An elegant solution is to buy a low profile dresser and have it do double duty as a changing table. A helpful feature is soft-closing drawers, which are very handy when you only have one hand free! When shopping for a crib, look for one that can morph into a toddler bed with the purchase of a conversion kit, as a bridge to the “big girl” bed.
You’ll also want to think ahead at all of the toys your baby will have, and how you will want to store them. Those baskets from Pottery Barn Kids or the Container Store that slide onto a bookshelf are cute, but trust me, they have a low capacity, and they definitely won’t hold all of junior’s playthings. It’s not too early to get a full-on toy box, which you could put either in a closet or along a wall.
A glider, or some sort of rocking chair, is a must for all the feeding and reading you’ll be doing with your little one. The most important features for me have been overall comfort (obviously) and padded arms. Lots of gliders are handsome enough to find a home outside the nursery once its tour of duty there is complete – for much more information on gliders, please check out Thoroughly Modern Glider.
5.) On The Floor
Flor Nursery with Rake Me Over and Feelin' Groovy
Flooring is such a personal choice, but an important one. If your nursery has wall-to-wall carpeting, I would say you’re all set – unless you want to change out the color/texture. If you want to install new carpeting, consider a hard-wearing berber in a darker neutral (not white/cream), somewhat variegated hue to hide all of those stains that you have to look forward to.
For those of you who, like me, have a hard wood surface to start with, you’ll want to buy a large area rug (with a thick pad underneath) to help with noise dampening, but especially to create a safe environment for baby to play. I would not suggest spending hundreds of dollars on a beautiful rug that you want to keep forever – think of this as a semi-disposable piece, as you may want to throw it away after a couple of years (or sooner, if you, like me, have a spitter on your hands!). Those slubby rugs, dhurries, and braided rugs, are great solutions for baby’s room – the keys features to look for are many colors (not too light), and a tighter weave. I would think twice before purchasing a thick, plush, loose-piled rug, like a shag. This could be a nightmare to clean. Look at textures and surfaces that will be easy to clean with a baby wipe. One last tip – branch out beyond baby stores when you are rug shopping to find better variety, and probably better prices, too. I found my son’s rug at the Crate & Barrel outlet – it was a steal, and I will definitely be tossing it in about a year. 🙂
Another great solution for the nursery is Flor – which are modular 12×12 carpet tiles with a wide variety of colors, patterns, and design possibilities. The best part – if a tile is damaged or stained, you can easily remove it to fix, or replace it if it’s really gone, without having to throw away the entire rug. This is also a creative way to “install” a wall-to-wall carpeted surface that you can remove later. Check out their gallery for nurseries and kids rooms for inspiration.
6.) Off The Wall
Home Big Print by Judy Kaufmann (Etsy)
Wall art is one of the more fun things to shop for, but it can also be an overwhelming endeavor due to the sheer number of choices available. I think it is nice to find one large-scale item (if your room can accommodate it) that brings together the colors in your palette, and acts as a focal point of the nursery. This could be a framed photograph, painting or print, a large vinyl decal, a quilt, a mirror, or some other item that works with your theme. Once you’ve selected this item and determined how much space it will occupy, seek out other items to add personality to the room.
Here are a few sites to search to get you started on your research:
7. Personalize It
Personalized Girls Alphabet Wall Art (Red Envelope)
One of the simplest, and most fun ways to create a unique nursery is to add an item with your baby’s name, initials or monogram. In this day and age, you can personalize almost anything – including, but not limited to pillows, rugs, quilts/blankets, wall decals, prints and bedding.
These are some of the sites I checked out while creating my nursery, while I searched for a personalized wall hanging.
- redenvelope.com
- potterybarnkids.com
- etsy.com (of course!)
- rosenberryrooms.com
One tip – for artisanal sites like Etsy, if you don’t see exactly what you are looking for in terms of size, design, font or color, email the seller and ask them if they can do a custom order. More often than not, they’ll be able to accommodate you and create exactly what you’re looking for – just for you. I ultimately settled on a wall decal with my son’s name, in a custom color and font (Yellow Submarine, of course!).