Baby nursery decorating ideas

When my husband and I became pregnant we were so excited! After the excitement settled a bit, we decided to start thinking about how we wanted to decorate the nursery. First we had to figure out which room of our five-bedroom house we would make into the baby’s nursery. That was an easy choice for us since the smallest bedroom is located directly next to our bedroom. We figured that would be the ideal choice since we knew we’d be getting up numerous times during the night for diaper changes and feedings. It was nice that the room was a neutral color to start, so then we could go in any direction we wanted with the paint on the walls.

In researching baby nursery decorating ideas, we came upon the idea of using beadboard for the bottom half of the walls. I was actually laid off from my job as a recruiter one day during my pregnancy, and when I got home I was watching the Oprah Winfrey show. She had on her favorite decorator, Nate Berkus, who was talking about designer wall paper. I kept watching, and at one point he showed a wall paper that, once applied to the wall, looked exactly like beadboard. I mentioned the idea to my husband and asked him if he could make a chair-rail molding and he said he could, so we set out to start on the nursery.

Using the beadboard wall paper took a little getting used to, but it was self-adhesive, so all we had to do was wet the back and then stick it to the wall and smooth it out. Once we got into a rhythm, we were done in no time. The next step was for my husband to measure and cut the wood pieces for the chair-rail molding. He cut the pieces and then before he nailed them into the wall, he painted them white to match the white beadboard wall paper.

Once that step was completed we chose a beautiful shade of aqua for the walls since we were having a baby boy. The bedding set we found was aqua and green with fish and bubbles. Playing off the bubbles in the bedding, I found a fun circle mirror set which I arranged on the wall above the changing table. To complete the nursery décor, I decided that it would be nice to display our baby’s name above the crib. So I went out to our local craft store and bought wooden letters which spelled out his name, painted them white, then added green polka dots and hung them with green ribbon above the crib. It was the perfect touch to tie it all together!