5 Things I Think About When I’m Setting Up a Nursery

This post is created in partnership with The Baby Cubby. The team of real parents at The Baby Cubby spend hundreds of hours researching to find the best products so you can spend your time on the things that are really important in life, like your baby.

After I shared Tally’s nursery this week, someone asked when I was going to share Ani’s new room.

You guys, it’s going to be a while.

That room is a complete disaster and it’s going to need quite a bit of work to be at all worth sharing.

We’re also moving Star upstairs to Ella’s bedroom and moving Ella downstairs to Star’s bedroom which has never been decorated, so both Ani and Ella’s bedroom need to be addressed.

They’re both sporting ugly green carpet, beige walls, and absolutely no decoration. Also the random furniture we’ve had from our past master bedrooms. Definitely the rooms of your childhood dreams, right there.

Those rooms are next on my priority list, and so, along with having just finished up Tally’s nursery, I’ve been thinking a lot about decorating rooms for babies and children.

I’m certainly no expert decorator, but here are a few of the things I think about when I’m figuring out what to buy and how to arrange the rooms.

1. A beautiful crib or bed. This is the showpiece of the room, usually, and so I try to pick something I really like and that won’t go out of style quickly. It can be totally overwhelming to pick, which is why I love The Baby Cubby – it’s a team of real parents who test the heck out of baby products and then curate the best of the best. I mentioned in my post about Tally’s room how much I LOVE Babyletto products, so I was thrilled to see that they’d picked Babyletto cribs in their crib selection, and also this one which is a higher-end identical one to the one I picked for Tally’s room. When I’m picking beds, I try to pick something they won’t grow out of quickly or will start to feel childish (sorry kids, no car beds in this house).
2. A place to play on the floor. All our bedrooms are carpeted, but I still love a rug in a bedroom, especially a children’s bedroom, because it helps delineate a place to play. It also helps protect the carpet underneath (there was a bright blue paint spill in Ella’s room a few months ago and while I’m not wild about the blue stain on the rug, I’m grateful on a daily basis that it’s not on the brand-new carpet we installed last summer). I love a classic, subtle-patterned rug and I have my eye on this pink and white striped one for either Ella or Ani’s room. I also love this black diamond one – Ani’s room is also the guest room and so I want things that are a little more modern and adult, and this one is perfect.
3. Somewhere comfortable to sit. I always want somewhere to sit and if it’s possible to hold two people, all the better. My parents’ have a small couch or set of chairs in most of the bedrooms in their house and it’s so nice to have plenty of seating. I’ve noticed too that in Ella’s room, which has a very small rocker, it gets much less use because it really only seats one person (it’s darn cute, though). And for a nursery, a rocker or glider is always the best choice, I think.
4. Something to harness the miscellaneous stuff. In a perfect world (or a tiny baby’s nursery), nothing ever gets left out or random things dragged in. In all my children that are NOT Tally, there is a constant stream of weird little toys, dolls, stuffed animals, dress-up items, and other miscellaneous items coming into their rooms. Because I don’t want to be insane, I always add a toy basket to their rooms so that everything can just get tossed in for easy clean-up. I’m kind of picky about what baskets I get, but I love this stylish one and I can’t get over the fun tassels on this one.
5. One or two special little touches. I think everyone has their own ideas for what gives a room that extra little something, but it can be hard to figure out what those items might be. I love that The Baby Cubby has a good (but not overwhelming!) selection of really beautiful items to finish off the room, from these gorgeous tassel garlands to these Fauxidermy animal heads (I die over the elephant) to beautiful mobiles.

What do you take into account when you’re decorating rooms for your kids?

And if you’re looking for the best products (not just decorating, but also strollers, diaper bags, carseats, and more), check out BabyCubby.com. They offer free shipping over $49, price match every single day (even with Amazon!) and have an engaged parenting community over at the Cubby Community Blog.

Then you can use all the hundreds of hours you saved by letting them research every baby product on the planet to repaint the bedrooms.

Or if your rooms don’t need painting, you’re more than welcome to come help me paint ours.