Nursery Thread: Ideas/Themes/General Planning!

BumpasaurusRex

Since I'm on break for jury duty (ugh), I was wondering if anyone else has started thinking of nurseries.

What are your themes/colors/decor ideas?

BumpasaurusRex

With DS, we went with a neutral theme.

However, I really want to be more creative this time so while we still want to be neutral, I'm thinking maybe going with a nature theme.  

Im still not decided, though.  If it's a girl, I may go a little crazy with the frill!

kswiger06

@BumpasaurusRex going from the nature theme. my sister wanted to go neutral for her first because they let the sex of baby be a surprise. They did a jungle/monkey theme and it was cute either way. She ended up having a girl. I like going bonkers on girly frilly pink stuff though for girls so it was rough buying her neutral stuff lol. As for myself I really haven't put a lot of thought in it. I think I'll stay neutral and zero in on some gender specific things when we know what we're having. Husband always wants to know.

Xstatic3333

We already decided our nursery theme will be "New Englandy" ocean-think whales, dolphins, boats, lobsters, anchors, etc.  We already own some art that will work well for this, which is a big motivating factor.  This will be for either sex.  I figure as an infant the baby won't care, so we'll go with what we like to look at.  Once the LO is older I'm more than willing to have their room reflect their interests and tastes.  

Tennis11785

I've been toying with a nautical theme (main color being navy and the for accent color use other blues/teal for a boy and pink for a girl). Although I don't know that I love it for a girl.  

jodiarch

We are going for a scifi theme and we will gear it towards girly or boyish when we find out the sex of the baby.  I'm planning on knitting a Doctor Who/ Star Wars / Star Trek / Firefly mobile.  Not sure what the colors will be but it will probably be bright colors of the rainbow.  Heard once that babies see bright colors better.  

Xstatic3333

jodiarch said:

We are going for a scifi theme and we will gear it towards girly or boyish when we find out the sex of the baby.  I'm planning on knitting a Doctor Who/ Star Wars / Star Trek / Firefly mobile.  Not sure what the colors will be but it will probably be bright colors of the rainbow.  Heard once that babies see bright colors better.  

Love it!  How fun!

blush64

I usually went neutral for most decor and items like playpen, highchair. (Didn't end up using most of what I had) I did have a selection of gendered and non gendered things for each baby. 

fourPsinapod

Turquoise and grey - maybe elephants? Maybe just plain patterns. But definitely those colors. 

varimama

I told DH I'm painting a forest scene on one wall of the nursery with trees and some woodland animals. We'll see if that happens since we're hoping to buy a house no earlier than December probably closer to January/early February and I'll be pretty pregnant then... Our lease is up in April and we don't want to be paying a mortgage on top of rent for too long... Maybe I can do it once the baby is born, he/she won't know that the wall wasn't painted right away!

yogadevil

I feel like I'm going to have a super boring nursery compared to all these cool themes lol. We'll pick a paint color once we get in the new house, and I know I want a hot air balloon mobile somewhere in there to honor my dad, and some rustic-y shelving for the cloth diapers. Beyond that I'm not going to do too much more besides sew some blackout curtains. I have a hunch I'll just pretend Minimalist Chic is totally a thing and just roll with it til the kidlet accumulates more things

joyful08

Ooh I definitely already know. 

For or a boy it will be a Mickey Mouse/football theme. Somethings to this effect...


For a girl I want to do a lavender & mint color scheme with some beachy decorations. Kind of like this...


I am am going to get all my big purchases (crib, rocker/recliner..) in grey so it goes with both themes and I can reuse those things for the next babies. 

CherryBananas

Since we are team green I'm thinking something along these lines 

PerraSucia

@CherryBananasthis is beautiful! would you wickerbasket your plants and just take them outside to water?

kswiger06

PerraSucia said:

@CherryBananasthis is beautiful! would you wickerbasket your plants and just take them outside to water?

We had a wicker pot before. It was lined with plastic so there was no leaking.

angeltennis3

we purposely did a neutral nursery with DD so we wouldn't have to redo two rooms when it came time for baby #2 as we like having the nursery be the closest bedroom to our master. 

Our nursery is gray, yellow, and teal with a "you are my sunshine" theme. My grandpa (who has passed) used to sing me that song all of the time, so now every night when I lay my daughter down to sleep I sing it to her. 

Like @joyful08 we are doing a mint and lavender theme for my dds big girl room. All centered around this bedding from PBK because I am in love!

CherryBananas

PerraSucia said:

@CherryBananasthis is beautiful! would you wickerbasket your plants and just take them outside to water?

I hadn't even noticed that basket! I'd hope a basket like that would be lined. I'm not going to go out of my way to make extra work for myself lol. 

mrslittlemac

I'm..  not.. doing a nursery. I just can't see having an infant all the way across the house, which is where the other bedroom is. So baby's crib will be in the master bedroom (or maaaybe the living room, which is adjacent) until baby is old enough for me to feel safe that far away. Once baby develops a taste for colors or themes, then I will go all out on the decorating! 

runnermom04

With DS I did a woodland creature theme, it was gender neutral but I still have the decorations in his room. Not sure what we're going to do for this one... Maybe ocean creature themed, not whales though lol too over used IMO

poofwok

I'm in the "I still have no effin' clue" club. I haven't thought about it for more than 0.5 seconds and probably won't give it much more thought until we find out the sex of the baby, lol.

Howardbae2015

my themes I have in mind so far are jungle/safari, woods (trees, deer, wooden paneling, etc), Noah's arc, or if it's a girl maybe go all out girly with crystal chandeliers and pink everywhere, oh and ruffles!!! Can't forget the ruffles! 

thehappyphotog

We aren't doing one and I'm ok with that.  We have an empty room because our oldest just graduated and moved out, so we have the space, but meh.  #4 stayed in our room for over a year and never used his nursery.  I'd rather wait.

kswiger06

Hmmm this could be a dumb question but I know different people call different rooms different things. To me the nursery is just the baby room. It will always be our baby's room as they get older even as a teen. Do some of you have a special room that is only used for the infant, then move them to a different bedroom once they get bigger?

Howardbae2015

kswiger06 said:

Hmmm this could be a dumb question but I know different people call different rooms different things. To me the nursery is just the baby room. It will always be our baby's room as they get older even as a teen. Do some of you have a special room that is only used for the infant, then move them to a different bedroom once they get bigger?

Nope one room per kid.  That means we will run out after 2 and have to upgrade houses. If we are still in our current house, I plan to change the nursery around age 3-5 maybe when they develope their own taste and interests. In the meantime they will like what I like haha! 

kswiger06

@Howardbae2015 that's exactly why we bought a 4 bedroom house. We just bought the house last year and it was easy to narrow down the possible houses once I said I wanted 4 bedrooms. We've been talking about another baby for a few years... if we have more though they will be bunking up lol

kelnhonk

We're going to do an airplane nursery if it is a boy.  We love planes in our house and there are some adorable ideas out there.  If it is a girl,  well we aren't too sure yet. 

BumpasaurusRex

kswiger06 said:

Hmmm this could be a dumb question but I know different people call different rooms different things. To me the nursery is just the baby room. It will always be our baby's room as they get older even as a teen. Do some of you have a special room that is only used for the infant, then move them to a different bedroom once they get bigger?

Nope, we plan to have one room per child and update it as they get older.  

To help DS get excited about being a big brother, we plan to update his room a little to more of a big boy bedroom.  Since we went neutral, we don't have to change the paint color but might add more decor/accents of what he's currently into, which is dinosaurs.  I've been trying to find some cool decals for his walls but haven't come across one that I like yet.

cantalopes24

I spent a lot of time on my last two kids nurseries only to redo their room like 18 months later. My current plan is to just reuse stuff from my other kids. The furniture has been in the room since we moved a year and a half ago.

kswiger06

@BumpasaurusRex I love wall decals. I'm always looking at them imagining a change of decor, I'll let you know if I see any cute dinosaur ones!

WinchesterGirl

I am super impressed you guys have all these themes... I suck at interior design, but I've seen some more subtle things on pinterest I might be able to pull off.

The room is a nice grey with white trim, and it will stay that color. We may move, and if so will still paint the same color. Then I'm thinking white or antique white furniture, and some color accents once we find out the sex of either coral, lavender, or aqua. The flooring is original pine, so it goes with anything.

ETA inspiration photos:

aecm

kswiger06 said:

Hmmm this could be a dumb question but I know different people call different rooms different things. To me the nursery is just the baby room. It will always be our baby's room as they get older even as a teen. Do some of you have a special room that is only used for the infant, then move them to a different bedroom once they get bigger?

That's what I'm planning right now (but it might change!). This will be our first and we have 4 bedrooms, so the smallest will be the nursery. We'll probably move the first into a different / bigger bedroom when they're older and (hopefully) we have a second baby. I'm doing a gender neutral nursery with a Beatrix Potter theme so it will work even if we end up with one of each gender! Of course we'll probably end up redecorating "the nursery" once kiddo #2 is older, but at least we can just do a one time nursery decoration and keep it that way for several years, rather than having to decorate two separate nurseries and then transition them both into bedrooms later on. 

kswiger06

@aecmathew I see... that makes sense. When we had our first 2 the house we had was set up where the master bedroom was across the hall of the 2 other bedrooms so we were close to each room and we let our son pick what room he wanted, then the nursery/baby room was just the 3rd bedroom. When we bought this house it has 4 bedrooms (just for the future baby we wanted), we again let our kids pick their rooms but it's kind of neat that the last room will be the baby room, because the baby room and our bedroom have a closet door that we can leave open and walk straight through from one room to the other. It's strange but our closet is a whole wall length so we won't be missing any closet space. I'm actually super excited about the super easy access to the baby room. 

kswiger06

But to try and keep a little on about the theme... I can tell you what our older kids are currently doing. It might give some ideas. Our son loved the Disney movie cars as a tot so we did a white room with red and blue accents with the licensed cars bed set and curtains. I was thinking as he got older he would just grow into "big kid cars" more like posters of cool expensive cars and stuff... he's 9 and he's over the kiddie cars but switched to star wars lol so that's how he will be redecorating over the year for him. Then our daughter has always loved Disney princesses and at 7 still does so we have been able to keep her room with pinks and purples with princess characters on bed set and other random room decorations.

Gingersnap

I totally want to see your Beatrix Potter room, how cute @aecmathew

skiingstark

So if I have a boy going star wars themed, soo excited. We are huge star war nerds.


If we have a girl, I have been debating between different disney themes:
Top choice, Frozen, not pink though, blue and white themed, snow themed, so not the pinky princess themed. I am a huge skier so I love a snow theme idea. 


Next lion king theme, soo cute, I love lion king. 



Next doing a Hawaii beach Leo and Stich theme. 



Can you tell I love Disney? So Girl will have some sort of Disney theme but not going pink and girly and boy star wars, who would not love a wampa rug?

kswiger06

@skiingstark I'm not necessarily into star wars, but that rug is awesome. My son got super into star wars, I bet he'd love a rug like that!

emilypanthel

@skiingstark the Hawaiian one is awesome, plus with Moana coming out there will be a bunch more options too. 

joyful08

@skiingstark DH and I are HUGE Disney nerds! I love all of your nursery ideas!

aecm

Gingersnap said:

I totally want to see your Beatrix Potter room, how cute @aecmathew

Thanks! I'll post pictures of it once we really start working on it. My mom has already started a cross stitch with a bunch of the characters on it, and I LOVE the colors.

There are also some murals, and I love this one because it's so detailed:

My mom has also found all my old Beatrix Potter books and a Beatrix Potter lamp that used to be in my nursery / bedroom. In fact my parents have quite a few things left over from my baby days that we'll be incorporating into the nursery, which is so special! 

feelingjovani

We're going to paint grey with white furniture and have an elephant theme. I want to keep it neutral (especially the walls) so hopefully we won't have to repaint later on. Plus I'm obsessed with grey rooms. 

cheymarie29

fourPsinapod said:

Turquoise and grey - maybe elephants? Maybe just plain patterns. But definitely those colors. 

Me too! We painted the nursery Grey and white and I love the turquoise accents!