Allergic to duckies and bunnies? Feeling too sophisticated or hip to welcome a baby into your home? We have some thoughts for you… and some of ’em are downright cheap.
I was wandering around IKEA at about 15 weeks pregnant when I saw a baby’s room design that I loved. Mostly it was the stripes on the wall. They were so much fun, and gender neutral. I took a closer look at the wall and saw that IKEA had done me the favor of indicating exactly what paint brand and color they had used. Fast forward two months and I had my mom and stepdad under my command, painting along the straight lines I had pencil-sketched on the wall. (Instructions: Paint whole wall light color. Wait one day. Pencil in stripes. Tape along pencil lines. Paint darker color. Remove tape.)
Other suggestions from smart parents:
- Use a dingbat font to put funny faces on the wall
- Make artwork in the vintage-y style you see at Pottery Barn Kids “all by self,” as my toddler used to say
- Put up huge-ass letters, bought or made
- Use an alternative to a mobile
- Put a large animal on the wall (omigod is this cute!)
- Even hipper than the last link, a whimsical cartoon for the wall
- Get customized (skin, hair, background!) fun and funky wall designs at YoonKids (via DesignMom)
- And below, see how my sister decoupaged the pages of Goodnight Moon onto a child-sized table.
When you design your baby’s room, post a link to a picture! We love to see cool baby rooms and hip nurseries.
I like that a lot, too! Maybe we’ll do the same for our daughter’s nursery… er, bedroom. (She’s nearly 11. We never did get around to decorating. Of course, now the plans have changed…)
I love your stripes! And polka dotted bumper pad.
I didn’t get too crazy with paint, but I went stripy with the curtains. After being inspired by my favorite store up here in St. Helena, the Vintage House, I went for a ‘vintage french’ theme for Charlie’s nursery. Yes, I know, a little weird for a baby boy, but hey, until he gets an opinion, vintage french it is!
Here’s my blog entry about it with photos:
http://shoppingfortwo.com/blog/?p=89
We decorated our sons room with art from classic children’s books by simply buying some calendars on clearance (for $1 each!) and framing the art using standard mats and frames from the craft store. The entire project – about a dozen framed art prints – cost a tiny bit over $100, and everyone comments on them. I believe the calendar we used was called something like “Celebrating Children’s Books” so it had art from a wide variety of artists, and almost everyone who comes in the room finds one that they point to and say “that was my favorite book as a child!”
My husband and I needed a neutral theme that wasn’t overdone. We love to travel and hope to return to the mission field with our kids someday, so we figured a travel theme was a good choice. We are using green as the main color and decorating with maps and globes. I even got crafty and put a map over a lampshade that had yellowed over time.
Very chic! I love it!
Check out the Rocket Dogs from Arte Bebe. I saw them on Cool Mom Picks.
Then again, I do have a penchant for characters that one could get sick of while dots and stripes are forever. My mom painted a huge palm tree and jungle animals in Holden’s room.
I don’t remember anymore which catalogue it was that I saw it in, but Land of Nod or Pottery Barn Kids or some such used that blackboard paint to create huge silhouettes to decorate a kid’s room and I thought that looked great. Right now our (two year old) son still shares our bedroom, but we’re about to move and he’ll soon have his own room, so I’m overwhelmed with options!
I like the idea of a “children’s book” theme – I was thinking about doing similar with the dust jackets of Nick’s books. We end up taking them all off, and at the moment they are all in a box gathering dust. What else will we do with them. I figure we could cut the cover section off and frame his favorites.
Also Art.com has tons of poster art that would look great in a child’s room – you can search by subject – trucks, giraffes, butterflies, dogs – and find all sorts of relatively inexpensive posters.
I’ve also considered trying my hand at photographing an eclectic group of basic things – apples, toy trains, rubber ducks, a tree – and creating a set of photographs that could be framed together in a grid as a decoration for Nick’s room. If I ever manage to do it, I’ll post a link.