Tips for Planning and Designing Your Baby’s Nursery
Whether you’re having a girl or boy, or you’re waiting to find out the sex of the baby until birth like us, planning the nursery is one of the most fun parts of preparing for a new baby! Pinterest is a great place to start gathering inspiration. You can find inspo for your nursery design, nursery organization, or even look up girl bedroom inspiration or boy bedroom inspiration to help you get ideas for your nursery theme and colors. Speaking of Pinterest, you can hit the Pinterest save button on any of the images in this post to save this article for future reference when you’re ready to start putting your baby’s room together.
When designing a nursery, I like to first think about how you want the space to feel. Do you want it to feel calming? Do you want it to feel playful? Maybe you want it to feel both calming and playful. Having an idea of the feelings you want to get from being in your nursery will help guide your ideas, colors, and decor. For example, for a calming nursery you might go with more neutral toned blues, greens, or pinks apart from the classic neutrals such as gray, beige, and white. For a playful nursery, you might consider brighter colors or mixing patterns. For me, I enjoy a calming space for a nursery because I feel like everything outside of that room is slightly chaos (ha!). Here are a couple of photos from Ada’s nursery. We are still working on the nursery for baby #2 but I’ll share that soon too!
Here are some top tips and design considerations to help you get started with planning your nursery.
Functional nursery furniture layout
When planning the layout of your nursery consider the items that take up floor space. Typically this will be your crib, dresser, glider / rocker, clothes hamper, diaper pail, and area rug. Consider how these items function together or on their own, and design your space in a way that feels natural and practical. For example, if you plan to use a dresser as your changing table, placing your diaper pail and clothes hamper on either side of the dresser will allow you to toss what you need right in to the trash or hamper during a change, without having to leave your baby’s side or carry things around after you are finished. For a diaper changing pad, we love the Keekaroo! It’s easy to clean and cuts down on your laundry loads.
Designated baby feeding station
I recommend having a designated space to feed your baby in the nursery with a comfy chair and everything you need during the feeding nearby. In addition to burp cloths and a breastfeeding support pillow, this will also include things to do during the feeding such as trim baby’s nails. Whether you are breastfeeding, bottle feeding, or doing a mix of both, having a space associated with eating can be helpful for both you and baby. I cover everything you need to set up a designated feeding station in the Baby Prep Toolkit, and even include a checklist so you can make sure you have everything you need to set up your space.
Lots of storage for baby items
Using a dresser as a changing table is a great way to get some extra storage for clothing, medications, extra sheets, etc. If you have a closet think about how you can utilize storage totes, bins, and hanging organizers to maximize the space. You might not typically think to put storage totes on your baby registry, but I highly recommend doing this because storage totes can be used to store too big and too small clothes, shoes, and other baby items while not in use. There are lots of cute storage baskets to match various themes and decor that can be used out in the open for toys and blankets.
Access to electrical outlets
Consider all of the baby items that will need to to be plugged in and make sure you are able to do so within a reasonable distance of an electrical outlet. This is something you take into consideration when planning your floor layout. You won’t want extension cords running across the nursery that are accessible to your baby! For example, if you plan to place your sound machine and video monitor on the dresser, you will want to make sure that your dresser is in front of or near an electrical outlet.
Designing a nursery for your baby is a special experience. This space will be one that you spend lots of long nights and experience lots of firsts in. Consider these nursery design design tips and enjoy the process!
