Nursery decorating-plans and ideas and inspiration « Back to Group Discussions

[timesway]

Thought it could be nice to share plans ideas or inspiration for nurserys..

My oh wants to go all out on a jungle/pirate theme.. We shall see how far we take if but it should look pretty cool if he pulls it off.. What are your ideas or plans .. Also perhaps we could post pictures which are our inspiration or could be others?

Approaching the 3rd trimester makes it all feel a little real and overwhelming so perhaps this thread could help ground us all.

[CoBabyMaker]

Oh I'll join in!  I love to play decorator.   A pirate theme sounds like fun!

I've got two girls and for some reason decorating for a boy this time was really throwing me and I couldn't figure it out.  Then I realized that a big part of it was that I was trying to plan a theme room because DH mentioned a baseball room but I didn't really want a themed room.  So we talked about it and I think we've landed on a happy medium incorporating baseball things without it being too theme-based.  Now I think we're both excited as we like to work on our house together.

Anyhow, we are actually going to with some dark colors for the room which I know is not typical for baby but we like it and baby will probably only nap in there for a good while anyhow.  We are going to use some wood flooring someone gave us (I think we have enough.) up one of the walls to make a wood accent wall.   I think we will paint the room a darkish shade of gray although I am sort of drawn to a steel blue right now.  I will cut a giant letter D from MDF and paint it out probably silver to hang on the wood wall.  The other wall will be a gallery wall I think. Assortment of pictures, a shadow cube with a baseball glove, maybe a little chalkboard. There is a hutch in the room now which will stay and I will switch out the hardware for something not so girly and I will put jars of baseballs on top of it.  I took some inspiration from THIS ROOM.  Although our wood wall will be more modern like THIS ONE probably.    We picked up THIS LIGHT at ikea and DH wants to paint it orange (He is a SF Giants fan.).  I'm still deciding on curtains.

[BabySmurf]

Oh fun! With my first we lived in a one bedroom apartment, so we never set up a real nursery - I just got a crib and nice bedding.  I would have done an outer space theme though if we had the room...although he never used it anyway.  I *could* have used more storage type furniture - dressers, etc, because that would be so useful now! At this point I'm thinking about actually setting up a bedroom for DS at the same time getting some key items for the baby.  I'm pretty sure that she will be sleeping with us for a long time, so I'm *trying* not to go crazy, lol!

I'm thinking of working with the color scheme that we already have in the guest room - light sageish green walls, with splashes of white, pink, purple, blue and green in a beachy theme.  I was not planning on a theme because sort of think of them as excessive....but they are fun, and realizing that at age two my son already has definite preferences, so babyhood is the *only* time I get to do it my way

I still have the dark wood crib that we bought for DS, and we will probably just sidecar that to our bed and set up the "nursery" with a changing table, dresser, and maybe a few more baby oriented pictures.  Probably going to go with white or light furniture for this one. 

[aHikaru]

waldorf inspired nursery, the first seven years involve a peach like color, so that is what I will be painting the walls, and will have natural furniture and items.

[Gooseberry]

Because we didn't find out the sex of our girls before they were born, we went with nursery decor that was gender neutral.  For DD1, it was woodland creatures and gnomes (she was also a gnome for her first dress-up Halloween at 19mo), and for DD2 we did castle.  The woodland creatures room is a very pale green with natural wood furniture.  A friend painted a picture with a gnome and a fox (she modeled the fox on the one that appears in the curtain fabric I found).  The castle room is a bright but light blue with red and white stripped curtains (trying to look like knights' banners/flags) and has some odds and ends castle decor.  

This baby won't have his/her own room, but we'll put a crib in our room and I'm trying to come up with another gender neutral way to do the bedding.  I'd like it to have some kind of theme, and not just be green and yellow bedding.  I'm not too keen on jungle, teddy bears or farm (which what many stores have for gender neutral bedding).

Ideas?

[FarmerMomma]

Gooseberry,
Maybe ocean, mountains, or some other natural scenery. Maybe a berry patch? Solar system?

DS's room which will be sleeping room has been jungle themed with green walls and awesome cloud fabric ceiling. Want to stick to some natural scenery cause I love the ceiling but am thinking of maybe something new. Maybe not.

What will be the play room is almost Waldorf peachy a little dark but could be lightened with a glaze maybe. It's such a big room that the castle idea sounds great though. Could still feel a little royal but playful. Maybe with some towers in front of the corner windows and a stage in between with huge fabric curtains to cover the stage. Then we've made good use of the space plus insulated that tall west wall. Head is spinning. So excited to be excited again.

[Quinalla]

DH is going to repaint the nursery, so I we need to pick a color. And we are re-carpeting the whole upstairs so there will be new carpet in there too which will be nice, the current carpet is the original cheapo carpet. I'm thinking maybe a light green or blue for the paint, need to go look at colors and see what I can find though. I'll get a cute nightlight, probably an elephant or frog one and we'll rehang the few pictures that are in there (one is a crochet butterfly a teacher I had made for our wedding and the others are small paintings I got when we were in Italy from street artists, one is of the Colosseum and the other is of this red flower that was everywhere in Florence, might hang a few more we have around too if they fit). And maybe curtains, DH has been slowly replacing all the mini blinds in the house with curtains and that room is the last one with blinds now, but we'll do generic curtains mostly likely, not baby ones

[Quinalla]

Ok, just got done doing a few layouts in cad, two cribs makes this much harder! Here are 3 options, I think I like option 2 the best:

Option 1:


Option 2:


Option 3:


Entrance is on the bottom left, trying not to block the closet on the top right or the vent in the top middle and not totally block the window in the top left. Also, all of these options lend themselves well to having one crib set up first, then adding a second crib later. DH's idea of putting the two cribs on either side of the dresser sticking out into the room does not work anywhere space-wise, so I'm glad I put this in CAD!

[kimble]

mmmm CAD *drool* it's great that you have a tool like that at your fingertips!

It reminds me of an infamous time in college when our friend wanted to loft his bed and put a drum kit under it ... I measured everything and used scale cutouts to see what would fit. Everything was perfect EXCEPT I had missed some electrical conduit near the floor, so one end of the closet/armoire would have been floating in air and the other resting on the conduit (heavy duty institutional setup, it could easily bear weight). Since we had wedged everything in there, everyone stood around scratching their heads for a solution ... DH went down to the parking lot and carried up a huge chunk of concrete (to this day, I'm not sure where he got it) and shoved it under the un-supported end of the closet. Problem solved! the setup worked perfectly for him, and I know other people tried to take it apart and failed. I wonder if it is still like that .... ?

Anyway, OT reminiscing aside, I like #2 the best too. It gives the most clearance by the doors, and doesn't obstruct anything too much.

[BabySmurf]

I think 1 or 2 works well, but I like 1 better.  Only because in option 2, 3 sides of that right hand crib are blocked, plus partial blockage from the dresser....it may be hard to reach baby in the crib once they start to move around a bit.  But that would be my only concern :) 

[CoBabyMaker]

Do you already have the long dresser?  I am wondering if a taller, more narrow dresser would be an easier fit since you don't need the surface of it as a changing table. It could  probably go between the cribs in option one or where it is in option 2 nicely.

[aHikaru]

started painting trim and the walls this week in DD's "playroom", def feeling more productive than I have been the past few weeks... I'm currently leaning towards putting the crib in DD's playroom since the baby will be sleeping with me for a bit,, and then keeping DD's bed in my room since we are very attached. 

[aHikaru]

Originally Posted by Quinalla 

Ok, just got done doing a few layouts in cad, two cribs makes this much harder! Here are 3 options, I think I like option 2 the best:

Option 1:


Option 2:


Option 3:


Entrance is on the bottom left, trying not to block the closet on the top right or the vent in the top middle and not totally block the window in the top left. Also, all of these options lend themselves well to having one crib set up first, then adding a second crib later. DH's idea of putting the two cribs on either side of the dresser sticking out into the room does not work anywhere space-wise, so I'm glad I put this in CAD!

if you can I would put the recliner at an angle next to the window, not only do I love sitting in my armchair near the window on a sunny day, placing it at an angle makes it more inviting, so between the 3, I would choose option 3 and put the recliner in the corner.

[Quinalla]

Thanks for all the great feedback everyone! I did try with the recliner in the corner by the window (for DD it was in the corner blocking the closet), but it eats up too much room that way. As for the dresser, yeah I already have the dresser and would like to use it, that was what DH said at first too though "Time to get a new dresser!" so it is a possibility if we really hate the setup. I don't want a tall dresser right next to the cribs though, once they can stand and start reaching for stuff, they are going to pull everything out of it from their cribs! And yeah, for 2 it could be hard to get to the corner crib baby, but I have really long arms and I am tall, so even if the baby scrunched into the corner, I could still reach I think without much trouble. And yeah, I draw in AutoCAD all day long at my job, so when I want to lay something out, it is really nice to have free access to it. I've totally done the build cardboard models of stuff before too

DH likes 1 better and I am ok with it, so I think we'll try 1 first and see how it looks in real life, then maybe 2 if we don't like 1, neither of us liked the wasted space of 3 much. And we don't have cribs yet (since DH broke DD'd old crib the other day) and the measurements I used for the crib were a bigger/bulkier one, so if we can get ones that are a bit smaller (not mini cribs, but some are much less bulky) that would save us a few inches too. I really wish they had put the vent under the window, it would make the space more usable! But if we end up not liking the set ups in real life, I may end up blocking the closet again anyway /shrug and we may want to block the closest once the kids are bigger, I had to when DD got bigger or she was constantly getting in there!

[aHikaru]

Originally Posted by Quinalla 

Thanks for all the great feedback everyone! I did try with the recliner in the corner by the window (for DD it was in the corner blocking the closet), but it eats up too much room that way. As for the dresser, yeah I already have the dresser and would like to use it, that was what DH said at first too though "Time to get a new dresser!" so it is a possibility if we really hate the setup. I don't want a tall dresser right next to the cribs though, once they can stand and start reaching for stuff, they are going to pull everything out of it from their cribs! And yeah, for 2 it could be hard to get to the corner crib baby, but I have really long arms and I am tall, so even if the baby scrunched into the corner, I could still reach I think without much trouble. And yeah, I draw in AutoCAD all day long at my job, so when I want to lay something out, it is really nice to have free access to it. I've totally done the build cardboard models of stuff before too

DH likes 1 better and I am ok with it, so I think we'll try 1 first and see how it looks in real life, then maybe 2 if we don't like 1, neither of us liked the wasted space of 3 much. And we don't have cribs yet (since DH broke DD'd old crib the other day) and the measurements I used for the crib were a bigger/bulkier one, so if we can get ones that are a bit smaller (not mini cribs, but some are much less bulky) that would save us a few inches too. I really wish they had put the vent under the window, it would make the space more usable! But if we end up not liking the set ups in real life, I may end up blocking the closet again anyway /shrug and we may want to block the closest once the kids are bigger, I had to when DD got bigger or she was constantly getting in there!

well, if your anything like me, you'll be moving the furniture around every month :D

[Quinalla]

Originally Posted by aHikaru 

well, if your anything like me, you'll be moving the furniture around every month

I usually don't move things once after the initial fussing to perfect the setup, DH is the one who tends to want to mix things up. I get a lot of inertia of "It works, don't mess with it!"

[FarmerMomma]

My friend with twins said that one point her twins were better with cribs right next to each other to see each other and touch each other and later it seemed as though the bigger boy was beating up on the smaller girl. That's just one person though. Is there general advice on twin crib layout?

[Quinalla]

Originally Posted by FarmerMomma 

My friend with twins said that one point her twins were better with cribs right next to each other to see each other and touch each other and later it seemed as though the bigger boy was beating up on the smaller girl. That's just one person though. Is there general advice on twin crib layout?

The only advice I've gotten (from my aunts who had twins) was to keep them in the same crib as long as possible, that seems to be pretty general advice from others too. So I plan to do that. That's a good thought on putting the cribs next to each other if they seem to want that, I can see it making fights too

[jessmn]

Originally Posted by Quinalla 


The only advice I've gotten (from my aunts who had twins) was to keep them in the same crib as long as possible, that seems to be pretty general advice from others too. So I plan to do that. That's a good thought on putting the cribs next to each other if they seem to want that, I can see it making fights too

My mom put my brother and I in the same crib and that's our plan with ours, too. My mom did say when we moved into our own cribs, they had to put us on separate sides of the room because we would play and whatnot all night. Also, as we got bigger apparently somehow we learned how to scoot the cribs closer to each other!

Will you put yours in a crib together right away, and in the nursery? These are our first kids, but we were thinking they'd be in the same crib in our room for a while, or maybe even some sort of sleeping thing right next to our bed. I don't know...

We don't plan on setting up a nursery for a while (we're remodeling our house) but eventually we plan on turquoise and yellow with dinosaurs!

[Quinalla]

I will play it by ear, I tried everything with DD(cosleeping, mini crib by the bed, etc.), but in her crib in the nursery mostly worked the best, but probably at least the first couple days/weeks in our room in a crib or mini crib by the bed and DH may end up sleeping in the guest room for a bit. I definitely want the nursery set up ahead of time just to save time later.