How To Decorate a Baby's Room
Hello friends! This month we will begin working on our baby boy's room. It's the tiniest room in our house, a former guest room, but I'm still so excited to transform it! I've been thinking of what I'd like to do and am flooded with ideas. I want to incorporate all of the things that we love as his parents (for now) until he is old enough to find his own style and turn his room into whatever he would like.
I want to incorporate Liberty London prints because I don't want a typical boy's room in the sense that I really don't want to raise a little man to be scared of floral prints disregarding them as "girly". There are so many stylish men running around wearing colorful trousers, floral bow ties (like my husband), and flashes of neon on their shoes (my husband has a pair with neon blue soles)... So why not bring these touches to his room too? I also want the room to fit the rest of our home for now until he decides to pin up Transformers posters later on (which is fine!). But for now, mommy and daddy make the decorating decisions so I'm going to rule with my heart and go for it.
The first step to any decorating project, at least for me, is to collect inspiration. Is that how you begin? I've been collecting ideas over at Pinterest (here), but I'm still on the fence with lots of things and cannot decide. This is rare for me, but given that I've only designed a few nurseries for clients in my life, I lack experience with them so I'm not so sure where to begin. Nothing like learning with your own child, so this is a fun chance for me to explore something new. I'm thinking to begin in the way I would embark on a living room or bedroom, so I've put together this list and plan to follow it!
How To Decorate a Baby's Room
1. Start pulling magazine tears or start a Pinterest board dedicated to your project. From there, locate a single source of inspiration that will inspire everything else. A piece of fabric. An image. A painting. 2. Measure your space and create a mood board - a physical board or a digital one works. 3. Decide on a basic color scheme (usually pulled from your inspirational source) then mix in fabric choices, though remain flexible. Look for patterns in several scales. 4. Decide where the focal point should be in the room and start "building" from there. 5. Buy your key piece of furniture, which is often the largest and most used in the room. For this space, it will be the crib. So I will buy his little bed first. 6. Decide how to make your focal point a genuine focus. For this space, I will need to strip off the current raufausertapete (it's a bumpy woodchip wallpaper in white that is throughout our home, sadly thanks to the landlord) and then either hire someone to plaster the walls or wallpaper them. I may paint or wallpaper the wall the crib is on in a different color. 7. Clean out the room, strip the walls, paper or paint, let the room air dry for a few days and then clean it top to bottom. 8. In the interim, decide on what else is needed in the space, at least for furniture and lighting - a dresser? A pendant? A lamp? A changing table? Rocking chair? Bookshelf? Closet? Start collecting pieces that you love (photos) and move them around on your mood board until pieces begin to "fit" together visually. Also MEASURE every piece to ensure they would fit. Start working on a floor plan and sketch something up to add to your mood board. 9. Order the pieces that you decide on or start flea marketing to find what you need. 10. Consider soft furnishings. A soft rug to crawl on, pillows, blankets, window treatments. For this space, I want a roman blind because I don't think curtains and kids work so well together and don't want curtains hanging to the floor in that room (dust collectors and easy to pull down). I will most likely have one custom made since the window is an odd size and I want a blind that blocks out light at night. 11. Consider storage. What do you need to store now and what can you imagine needing to store once the baby arrives? 12. Think of decorative ideas. Back to your focal point. What can you do to make the focal point more interesting through decorative elements? Start making decisions. 13. Shop and Decorate! Buy what you need for storage, soft furnishings and decorative accessories. Once your furniture has arrived and is in place, begin your decorating plan of attack. Arrange, hang, etc. Also think of what you can make by hand. This is a special little space, bring lots of mommy love to your little baby love. 14. Wash all of the cute little baby clothes you've acquired over the months (if you're like me you already have enough for the first few months) and enjoy the process of folding and hanging sweet little sweaters and trousers and stacking all of your hats with ears (my current obsession). 15. Take a final inventory. What are you missing? Burp cloths? A diaper bin? Something to hang on the wall that is a family heirloom? Is the lighting adequate? What is missing? NOTE: It's better to have only key elements in place before the baby arrives and not to obsess over making the room perfect or packing it with stuff "just in case". Like any room in your home, it needs room to breath, to expand, to evolve. Even more so with a room that will have a brand new occupant whom you've never met before, who will have their own needs and those needs will only be known after the little one arrives. Just have the basics in place for now. 16. Have you "babyproofed" the room? There is a great article about this on Lifehacker, so please read it if you're soon to be a new mom like me. Also remember: There should be nothing in the crib with your baby but the baby and the bottom sheet which should fit snugly over the mattress - no covers, pillows, bumper pads, no positioning devices and no toys. If you have these things "displayed" in there before the baby arrives, remove them and place on a chair until he is older. Read more about SIDS prevention here.
That's my list and is all I can think of for now. I can't wait to start my mood board and really begin on this space. I would love any baby room tips that experienced moms out there may have to share, so please add them into the comments section below.
(Photo: Norwegian photographer Elisabeth Heier, visit her blog - it's gorgeous!)