Baby Bedroom Ideas

With just a few design choices, you can create a baby bedroom that's stylish, organized and easy to keep clean. Here are some ideas for walls, floors, storage and furniture.

Walls

It's easy to make a big design statement with your nursery's walls. Paint colors can change the look of a room instantly. Pick a color scheme and paint your walls one or all of the colors in it. For example, my son's nursery's color scheme is red, mustard yellow and grey-blue. I could have painted the whole room grey-blue; painted one wall red, one yellow and one grey-blue (and either left the fourth wall white or painted it one of those three colors); or painted stripes or blocks of color on the walls. (In fact, I had to leave the walls white: sadly, my landlord wasn't into the idea of colorful paint.) Also, if the baby's bedroom has moulding running horizontally across the middle of each wall, you could paint the top half of the wall one color and the bottom half another.

You can also paint a mural: friends of mine painted a purple tree on a lilac wall of their daughter's nursery. You can draw an illustration, or find one online, and then stencil it onto the wall, or use a projector to throw the image onto the wall at the size you'd like it to be. Then you can use the projected image as a guide as you paint.

Decals are another, quicker and less permanent way to decorate your baby's bedroom wall. They come in all shapes and sizes, from simple dots to butterflies, owls, trucks and even Pirates of the Caribbean movie characters.

Floors

When considering a floor covering for your nursery, remember your baby is probably going to spend a lot of time on the floor. You're going to want something soft and sturdy that won't show the inevitable spills it's going to absorb. If your rug isn't easy to clean, try putting a fabric play mat on top of it for baby to play on.

You can also use interlocking foam play mats, which you can expand to cover a large area of floor.

Another great floor-covering idea is the 3D play rug. A company called IVI makes several designs, including Farm, Traffic and Family. They feature areas that are made of higher-pile wool than the rest of the rug, so they stand out visually and how they feel. Baby can crawl on them and feel the flowers, or run his fingers along the foliage beside a road.

Storage

Your baby's bedroom might not have a built-in closet, and you might not want to put an armoire in the nursery. Where to put all of baby's toys? One option is The Storage Tent by children's retailers Land of Nod. It looks like a mini circus tent with fabric drapes that conceal shelves of storage bins. It also has side pockets for extra toy storage. It's machine washable and easily put up and taken down.

While storage bins will be good for dolls and trucks, you'll probably also need bookshelves. You can mount them on the wall: Pottery Barn Kids has a great selection of colorful wall shelves. You can lean them against the wall (make sure to anchor them to the wall to prevent baby accidentally pulling them down) such as the Sloan Leaning Bookshelf from Pottery Barn. And you can even put them in the middle of a room so that they function as a divider. The IKEA EXPEDIT bookcase is a good choice for this last option. It has lots of open cubbies to store books and toys, and many of them are at baby's level, so you can put safe toys where he can reach.

Changing Tables

There are combination dressers and changing tables on the market, but many of them are expensive. You can make a dresser you already own into a changing table by putting a cushioned changing pad on top of it. Most changing pads come with a belt that attaches them to the top of the dresser so they don't slide off while you're changing a wriggly baby. You can also use a low shelf as a changing table; put the changing pad on top, and use storage bins to organize diapers and other supplies on the shelves below. If you're using an old piece of furniture for the nursery, consider painting it to go with your nursery's color scheme.