New Takes on Baby’s Room

If there’s a new baby coming to your house this year, you may be thinking about nursery room themes. If so, take heart from professional decorators, who say individual tastes are at the top of the list this year.

“While grey walls are popular, parents are choosing a variety of color schemes and themes these days, and gender is not a deciding factor,” according to California designer Allyson Becker.

From bright and playful to vintage cool, you may find inspiration from seven new moms who shared their design decisions with Parenting Magazine:

Nature’s bounty – Celebrate the great outdoors with grey walls and splashes of yellow, apricot and sage. Perfect for boys or girls, the scheme is easily carried out in baskets, area rugs, linens and window blinds.

Pink the modern way – If you want the room to look girly, but not too girly, stay with neutral walls, dark-colored furniture and soft pinks in the window coverings and rugs, livened up with a few hot pink accents.

Mellowed yellow – Perfect for either gender, a focus on yellow can be ‘tweaked’ with accents of aqua, grey or pale peach in the wall décor and window treatments.

Easy as ABC – Choose white or any neutral color for the walls and hang a set of colorful alphabet cards, classroom style, around the walls. Finish the décor in primary colors taken directly from the cards.

Off the wall – Start by choosing a children’s wallpaper pattern that delights you. Cover one wall with it, and use it as a springboard for selecting the wall color, rugs, lamps, and other accents appropriate to the wallpaper’s theme.

Chalk it up – Paint one wall with chalkboard paint, which actually becomes a canvas for baby when he or she is old enough to "paint" with chalk. Because the slate color is dark, accent the room with light, bright pastel hues.

Go on safari – The easy availability of giant-sized stuffed giraffes, elephant-shaped clothes hampers, and other safari animal accents makes this a solid design choice. Go ‘wild’ with color choices or stick with neutral. The theme is fun either way.