Baby Nursery Decorating Ideas – An Inviting Room for Baby and Parents
When decorating a nursery, you want your baby to feel relaxed and safe. You also want it a room where you feel calm and happy. If your only baby nursery decorating ideas include cramming a room full of Winnie the Pooh wallpaper, lamps, blankets, rugs, and accessories, stop! It will not only become annoying, it could compromise baby safety and your comfort. When there’s only one Winnie the Pooh crib or rocking chair available, you might give up a little bit of safety or comfort for the perfect decorative piece.
Better baby nursery decorating ideas include providing a lot of potential to grow. When you stick with mainly solid colors, you can add accessories to bring out a theme and patterns. This is easily changed without a lot of time and money. While you might feel ambitious right now, you will later appreciate an easy and inexpensive nursery makeover.
First things First – Baby Crib Tips
Start with the crib. Before you buy anything else, find the crib you love. As you probably know, there are a lot of beautiful cribs available. There are round baby cribs with majestic canopies, square baby cribs, and cribs that actually hook on to adult beds. You should skip all of those unnecessary and potentially harmful cribs.
Buying a round or square crib will lock you into buying a round or square mattress and fitted sheets. Odd shapes are more expensive, and your options are too limited. When you buy a traditional crib, you can choose from a variety of mattresses that will fit your crib perfectly. You have more fitted sheet choices, and there are now tiny little fitted half-blankets that fit at the end of a rectangle mattress.
It is no longer considered safe (according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission) to have plush baby comforters, fluffy pillows, toys, and other bedding in a baby’s crib. For your baby’s safety, there should be nothing else in your baby’s crib besides a fitted sheet and possibly a thin, fitted half-blanket that only comes to your baby’s chest.
If there’s even a chance that the canopy could collapse or fall, why risk it? And that beautiful canopy dressing that drapes and swags could be pulled down and is a suffocation risk.
The new cribs that hook on to Mom and Dad’s bed are dangerous, too. Parents think it’s a better way to hear your child in the middle of the night. Babies could easily suffocate on the adult bed linens or fall between the two beds. Stick with cribs and effective baby monitors for the nursery.
When it comes to cribs, keep it simple. Don’t look for an heirloom to pass on to your children. Cribs should be bought new for safety. If you aren’t incredibly tall, a drop-side crib will be more convenient. In some models, both sides drop down. Many cribs become daybeds as your child grows, which makes sense financially. A Delta Luv Jenny Lind model not only becomes a day bed later, it has high safety ratings, it’s affordable, and Consumer Reports gave it great reviews.
Your next obstacle is a mattress. You can get anything from foam to an innerspring mattress. Go for the firmest you can get. You should not be able to get more than two fingers between the mattress and the sides of the crib.
Mommy Comfort is Important, Too!
Next comes your rocking chair. Believe it or not, it doesn’t have to match the crib. If you feel more comfortable in a rocking recliner than a traditional wooden rocking chair, get it. Try out chairs and imagine sitting in them for long periods of time. Choose your favorite soothing color for your chair if it’s available and get the best comfort you can afford.
The Walls – Your Blank Canvases?
Creative parents get all kinds of baby nursery decorating ideas. Many feel the need to display their artistic talent all over the walls. While this might look great, it’s a big job to repaint and not have use of the nursery. Again, be practical. Besides, stamping butterflies or Noah’s Arks all over the walls might seem beautiful now. When every friend and relative you have buys you every little butterfly or ark they see, after about a year, you might want to never see another. Changing a theme at that point would mean repainting.
You should stick with solid colors on the walls or a subtle pattern (wallpaper or painting technique) on no more than two walls. Patterns are also limiting, and you will feel closed in if you do all four walls. There is no rule that says you can only use one color of paint on all four walls. Trends are now to use two different colors. Pastel colors are soothing. A bright red wall won’t be such a relaxing atmosphere. Paint the ceiling white. Ceilings are the hardest to repaint just for a color change, and you can always add removable decals if you want your baby to have something interesting to look at besides a mobile.
Other Nursery Furniture
You might be thinking, “Wow. Solid colors and a simple crib. How exciting.” Well, don’t worry. Now you can get creative. You no longer have to have a furniture suite. In fact, top decorators now find that to be a designer faux pas. Don’t get the dresser or changing stable that matches your crib. Get a dresser that will hold an ever-changing wardrobe without everything having to be mashed in when you shut a drawer. Get a changing table that is a comfortable height and has convenient extras like a place to store baby diaper bags for effortless restocking.
This is the time for cool painting techniques, stencils, stamping, and Wallies stickers. Based on the colors you’ve chosen, bring in fun baby characters. Furniture is a lot easier to replace or repaint. You can butterfly the dresser to death, and if you decide you’re sick of the little winged critters, it can easily be changed. But don’t be tacky. You want to create a cute, welcoming, soothing place, not a “stencils and stamps were on sale with free shipping” style.
About the Author
Shannon Schwartz is a successful freelance writer offering guidance and suggestions for consumers buying designer baby clothes, Graco baby strollers and baby products. Her many articles give information and tips to help people save money and make smarter decisions.
