Decorating a nursery is an exciting way to prepare for a new arrival, offering a chance to create a warm and inviting space for your baby.
This article will provide inspiration for nursery decor, covering themes, color schemes, and essential furniture.
Whether you’re looking for something modern, classic, or whimsical, these ideas will help you design a nurturing and beautiful environment for your little one.
Nursery Decor Ideas for Boys
First up, we’ve got fantastic baby nursery ideas for boys.
Futureproof Feature Walls
We love how this feature wall is bold, but at the same time, it doesn’t dominate the space. The black silhouettes of airplanes and balloons provide plenty of eye-brain stimulating contrast. And the pale blue sky, white clouds, and subtle purple sponging effect soften the whole wall.
This particular feature wall is washable wallpaper, which is extremely practical, and the colors provide plenty of scope for accent decor pieces and coordinating nursery furniture and fabrics.
Walls Meet Fabric
If you’re not a fan of “babyish” decorations or you’re decorating in the knowledge that you’ll be moving your baby from this room in the near future, patterned walls and soft furnishings are an excellent way to go.
This gives you a cozy nursery feel while keeping the room “age-neutral” and easy to repurpose at a later date.
Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark
Pale and pastel colors are a popular choice for nurseries, but you can use dark blues, purples, greens, or even black for a bold and beautiful room.
The furniture in this nursery is painted black. And the walls are a combination of white and black with white patterned wallpaper. A gorgeous built-in bookshelf was painted black to match the furniture. The overall look is coordinated, daring, and absolutely fabulous.
Nurseries Are Like Onions — They Have Layers
This woodland nursery has a cute but practical bear rug laying on top of a warm and cozy sheepskin. Layering one or two feature nursery decor items like the rug on a more generic item like the sheepskin is ideal for adding a dash of cute.
The same principle is at play with the chair — a plain base piece of furniture coordinates with the rest of the room through a throw and a carefully chosen cushion.
Go Big or Go Home
Don’t be afraid to go over the top with your nursery decoration. The colors in this mural are bold and bright, and the cartoon animals are adorable. Remember, this may be the one time you get the chance to get up close and personal with the paints and the colors, so embrace it.
You don’t have to be an incredible artist to paint something similar in your nursery. The grid method is a simple way for the most artistically challenged to transfer a small picture to a large wall (1).
Nursery Decor Ideas for Girls
Next, we’ve got the most amazing baby room ideas for girls.
Pink Can Be Bold
Choosing pink doesn’t have to mean pale, pastel, and frilly, as this room shows.
We love the bold, darker pink, and brown wallpaper, which works well with the natural, wooden crib. The pale chair and footstool and the white-with-a-hint-of-pink walls stop the room from becoming overwhelming or oppressive.
This atmosphere is easy to recreate in your own home.
Choose a wallpaper pattern for your feature wall, paint the other walls and the ceiling in a pale, contrasting color, and add neutral furniture. You can change up the room at any time by swapping the drapes, rugs, or cushions or adding accent decor pieces in different colors.
Painless Panels
Simple panels spice up a plain wall, and you don’t need to be a DIY expert to do it. This simple tutorial takes you through the steps:
Paint the panel wall in one color and the rest of the room in another. Then you can base the rest of your color palette on the single-colored wall. In this example, the white furniture keeps things light and airy.
Bugging Out
This unusual girl’s nursery decor is as simple as it is striking.
The butterflies and bugs fabric used for the curtains was also used for the cushion on the chair. Details of the fabric design are picked out for the artwork, with a cute ladybug picture on the wall. For the fabric stools, the color comes from the wings of a butterfly in the print.
White Is Not the Only Contrast
Don’t limit yourself to white woodwork, furniture, or soft furnishings for your baby girl’s bedroom. Using an alternative like the bronze/gold in this nursery maintains the feminine nursery decor vibe but adds a warmth that’s difficult to find with pure white.
The artwork was the first piece of the nursery, and all other decorating decisions came from that. We especially like that these pictures will work for many years and have the prospect of becoming heirloom pieces.
Eclectic, Eccentric, Enjoyable
You don’t have to have a coordinated color scheme or a theme to have a beautiful nursery. This eclectic explosion of colors and styles proves it.
This nursery design includes simple, colorful prints in primary-colored frames, a rainbow pom-pom garland, murals, and decals with a hint of retro and a generous dash of washi tape. They all come together to create a riot of color that somehow works.
Recreating Victorian Elegance
Sometimes your home will inform your nursery decor, and that’s the case in this elegant Victorian nursery. The incredible stained glass window sits high above the crib, so it’s no danger, and the period-correct wallpaper works perfectly with the woodwork.
One thing to note, if you’re going for a vintage nursery, be careful about the items you use. Many older pieces of furniture are either made in ways or of materials that we now know to be unsafe. This beautiful crib is a reproduction, ensuring neither the metal nor construction poses a hazard.
Gender-Neutral Nursery Decor Ideas
If you’re keeping the gender of your baby a surprise, or if you prefer gender-neutral baby room ideas, these are for you.
Ever Changing Decor
We love this blackboard wall nursery decor idea. Not only is it an excellent gender-neutral option, but you can change it up constantly, and it will work for years to come.
If you’re worried about making the nursery too dark, do what these parents did. Pair the black wall with white furniture and off-white walls for the rest of the room.
Monotone
The white and darker shades of green wallpaper in this nursery provide interest without being too overwhelming. There are endless ways to work with this more subtle gender-neutral nursery decor because it doesn’t have too strong a theme.
In this case, animals of the African savannah have been used in the artwork and soft toys. But you could just as easily use jungle animals, a travel theme, or anything else that tickles your fancy.
Green Is Good
Greens and yellows are the usual go-to colors for a gender-neutral look, but that doesn’t mean they have to be dull.
A single green wall with white or off-white furniture makes the perfect backdrop for your other nursery decor choices. You can keep it plain and low-key like with this room, but the simple color scheme makes it easy to add a dash of pizazz with more exciting accents.
Bold And Beautiful
This color scheme, with grey and red on white, is a flexible way to decorate your baby’s room. A small but striking strip of star decals sets the tone. Details such as the fabric baskets in the storage shelves help give a designer feel without the designer cost.
Double-Duty Decor
Grey stripes on one wall and a pale aqua tone on the others keeps this room gender-neutral.
This particular room is shared by a toddler boy and a baby girl and is warm and welcoming for both.
Earth Tones
Natural wood and earth tones are good baby nursery ideas for several reasons.
Not only are they gender-neutral but, if you choose your pieces carefully, wood can be a more sustainable and less environmentally damaging option. Also, untreated wood is less likely to give off fumes or chemicals like some painted or treated items can.
Finally, you can find natural wood products in most places, meaning you can repurpose kitchen shelves or similar items in the nursery.
Budget Nursery Decor Ideas
Not every nursery has to cost a fortune as these budget baby room decor ideas prove.
A Pop Of Color
Painting part of a room with a splash of color can make a bold, impressive statement without costing very much.
This vibrant green on the wall at the back of the built-in shelves gives so much more character than a plain white wall while also being less imposing than a solid wall of green.
Washi Tape Not Wishy-Washy
If you have a steady hand, washi tape stripes are an inexpensive nursery decor option. If you don’t have a steady hand, but you do have lots of patience, these washi tape crosses are also a good choice.
Or, if you’re looking for something a bit brighter, these washi tape mountains are pretty spectacular.
We All Scream For Ice Cream
These ice-cream sprinkle decals are inexpensive, or you can recreate the look using tester pots of paint or even paint pens if you can find the right pastel colors.
We love this idea because you can pair it with plain white furniture and accessories or pick up the sprinkle colors and use them to paint shelves or repurposed items such as dressers.
One option is to choose a set of affordable crib sheets and use them as a starting point for the sprinkle color scheme. The result is an expensive-looking, coordinated nursery for next to nothing.
A Gorgeous Gallery
This gallery wall looks like a costly designer option, but every piece was either repurposed from elsewhere in the home, a DIY project, or a keepsake item from a special event or trip.
The circle garland came from the mom’s baby shower. The pink paper flower and the garlands were homemade, with the garland pieces coming from a Hawaii trip’s lei. And the remaining elements were from elsewhere in the home.
Peek-A-Boo Paper
Wallpaper samples, scrapbooking paper, or even a printout of a pattern found online can make a standard, run-of-the-mill piece of furniture look like a unique art piece.
In this case, a bookshelf from elsewhere in the home was given a new life by adding adorable pink flamingo paper to the back of the shelves. Then a few special items, such as the flamingo picture frame and stuffed toy, were added.
Themed Nursery Decor Ideas
These are our favorite themed baby room decor ideas.
Subtle Nautical
Not every theme has to be an over-the-top, in-your-face event, as this subtle nautical-themed nursery shows.
The pale blue and slightly sandy-colored details give a seaside feel as a base. A framed whale picture and a couple of accent pieces tie the elements together.
Super-Duper Superheroes
The clever choice of artwork makes this superhero-themed nursery cute without making the room feel like the inside of a graphic novel.
Choosing artwork as your focal piece means you don’t have to source expensive themed soft furnishings that will only last a short while, such as crib sheets. Instead, like in this room, you can choose some fabrics with colors that link to the art.
Over The Rainbow
A rainbow-colored theme for your nursery decor gives you plenty of scope to be playful, and you don’t have to paint a giant rainbow on the wall to do it.
The polka dots in this room match the rainbow stool, dresser drawer pulls, and the homemade pom-pom name garland on the wall.
It’s A Circus
This circus nursery uses a big-top-inspired paint job on the ceiling to make this an over-the-top yet somehow subtle baby’s room.
The paint color and design nearly overwhelm the room, but it’s brought back from the brink by the clever yellow chandelier and the yellow framed retro circus posters.
BoHo Beach Baby
The bleached driftwood detailing on this crib is perfect for this boho beach, surfer-dude-themed nursery.
Stuffed toy wales match the whale print of the changing pad, while simple, non-baby-specific decor pieces above the crib will work well when your baby grows into a child who wants to redecorate to their tastes.
Space, The Final Frontier
This is one of our favorite ideas because a space-themed nursery can be tweaked in many ways. You can go for a scientific feel, a science fiction vibe, a link to mythology, or in many other directions.
In these two examples, a very similar feature wall serves as a backdrop for a Star Wars theme in one room and an astronaut theme in the other.
Nursery Decor Ideas for Small Rooms
Little rooms can pack a big punch, as these baby room decor ideas for small rooms demonstrate.
Space Savers
One way to get the most out of a small nursery is to make clever furniture choices.
This crib has a changing platform on top, so you get two pieces in one. There’s the bonus of a rail on the changing platform, meaning you don’t need an additional surface on which to lay out your little one’s change of clothes.
Double-Duty Drawers
The jury is out on whether you need a changing table at all, but if you want to have a dedicated place for changing diapers, a smaller chest of draws is just as effective as a specialist piece of nursery furniture.
Safety Notice
Raise The Roof
How you decorate can make all the difference in any small space, and a tiny nursery is no exception.
This baby room makes good use of a clever paint trick.
When you paint a color partway up the wall and then paint the rest of the wall and the ceiling white or off white, it gives the impression that the ceiling is higher than it actually is. This makes the room look and feels bigger.
Mini Furniture Doesn’t Mean Mini Style
Cribs do not have to be as large as the standard models currently available.
This particular crib is small for general use, but it folds up for easy transport to other rooms. Then, if you move to another home or move your baby to a bigger space, an extension pack transforms the crib into a larger model or a toddler bed.
Babies in the Closet
A nursery isn’t always a room; sometimes it’s a space in another room or even a repurposed closet.
Yes, you read that right.
This walk-in closet has dinosaur-print wallpaper and a glorious light fitting, making it a space dedicated for the baby’s use, without the need to turn over an entire room.
FAQs About Nursery Decoration
While we were speaking to readers about their nursery decor ideas, these are the questions we were asked most often.
When Should You Start Decorating Your Nursery?
Many people feel it could be bad luck to start decorating your nursery too early. We prefer waiting until at least the 25th week of pregnancy to paper or paint the nursery.
This makes it less likely you’ll be too big or uncomfortable to enjoy the decorating and leaves plenty of time for the smells of paint and other decorating to subside before your baby arrives. It also ensures if your baby is early, their room will still be ready.
How Do I Choose a Nursery Theme?
Rather than choosing a theme at the start, begin by choosing a crib or another piece of furniture you like, and work from there. You can also go for a single color palette or choose a cute accessory to base your theme upon.
What Should be in a Nursery Room?
The only things you really need for a nursery are a crib, crib bedding, and some storage. A changing table is nice to have, but you may not end up using it as often as you think, and the same goes for a comfortable chair for nighttime feeds.
Is It Okay To Put a Crib by the Window?
What Colors are Best for a Nursery?
Before you know it, your baby will have grown into a tiny person with a personality of their own and very clear ideas of how they would like their room. So make the most of their time as a baby, when they don’t care what their room looks like, and decorate in a way that pleases you.
Ignore the color psychology of “blue is relaxing and will help your baby sleep.” Your baby will wake when they’re hungry or uncomfortable or in need of attention, and they’ll sleep when they’re content.
Pale blues, greens, and purples are light and airy, while earthy neutral tones are warm and easy to coordinate. A fun pattern or mural on one wall can liven up a more subtle color scheme. And while white is lovely, it won’t stay white for long.
How Do I Make My Nursery Cozy?
A warm color on the walls will help provide a cozy feel, and choosing or painting furniture to coordinate will make the room more inviting.
Another idea is to add a comfortable chair with a side table and lamp. A seating area is not only practical; a soft chair with a cushion will also look cozy and appealing. In addition, as long as they are safe and secure, nursery rugs will add warmth and coziness to the floor.
Make It Fun
It’s easy to become overly stressed about nursery decor ideas and wanting to get the room just right. But guess what? Your baby only cares about being warm, dry, and full of milk and won’t mind one bit if their bedding doesn’t coordinate with the curtains or their nursery isn’t fashionable.
So try your best not to fret, and enjoy the creation of your little one’s space.
