Before bringing your precious newborn baby home from hospital you'll want to have your home prepared for baby and not only have it decorated to your taste, but also have it as a functional space for your new baby and all the things they need in their first few years of life.
Decorating a baby's nursery is always such a lovely task and something I've done twice now (whether I'll ever get to do it again is yet to be known!) and I think that planning and decorating a nursey is a very personal thing as everyone has their own style and sense of what a nursery should contain.
Bringing a new baby into your home can pose space and design challenges - especially if your house is quite small, as our is. Step one for preparing for baby's arrival is decluttering. Honestly, baby's seem to accumlate masses of things in the blink of an eye - even when you swear to yourself that you're going for a minimalist theme for their nursery... so having a good clear out before baby arrives will enure that your home doesn't become too over-cluttered with stuff..
Once you have cleared some space, you can decide which room you'd like baby's nursery to be and where you'd like them to sleep in the first few months of their life. We settled on the box room for both of our boys nurseries - it being small enough to feel like the perfect, cosy space for a new baby However, both of them also slept in a Moses basket next to our bed for three months after they were born too, so we had to make sure we had space in our own bedroom for them aswell.
Make sure you take measurements of the nursery room before you buy any furniture, just so you can be sure it'll all fit in comfortably! The essentials for us were a cot and storage for baby's clothes and other keepsakes/toys, however, you may also choose to have a changing table, rocking chair and other pieces in the nursery, so just make sure you factor them all in to the space you have available.
Shelves are a great space saver in a small nursery and such a lovely way of displaying all of baby's precious keepsakes too. Cots with built-in drawers, storage containers that slide under beds, cubed units and free-standing wardrobe closets that grow with your child are all great space-saving solutions too.
Remember that your baby has spent the past nine months in a warm, dark environment, so even though you may want the nursery to have a 'light and airy' feel, babies sleep better in a dark room. You can create a dark and cosy sleeping space for your baby by installing window shutters to control the light in the room and to keep it warm. The brilliant thing about shutters is that they can block out the light as effectively as blackout curtains and they can dramatically reduce noise outside the room to provide a peaceful sleep for baby too.
The nursery is a perfect space to have fun with decorating and a theme, if you so wish to have one. For my eldest sons nursery I had a very classic look with beige coloured bedding and a tulle canopy over his cot, but I also added nautical elements in there too as we live on an island.
For my youngest I chose a Beatrix Potter themed nursery as I'm a big fan of her books and I thought Peter Rabbit was a lovely theme for a baby boy.
Adding personal touches for your baby through their nursery decor is a lovely way of making their nursery a very personal and charming space. Personalised wall prints are lovely and are quite cheap to buy too. I found some gorgeous Peter Rabbit prints for my baby's nursery from Lovely Little Prints. You could also get personalised bunting, cushions or standing letters to add subtle personal touches to the nursery.
If you're wanting to go for a certain colour scheme, you can hide baby's colourful toys in toyboxes/canvas bags to keep everything clean and cohesive looking.
Keep in mind that as your child grows you may want to adapt their room to be age appropriate. If you want to have patterned prints, use them for easily changed items such as bedding or cushions and if you want to have characters, etc. on the walls, vinyl stickers are a great temporary solution.
Preparing your home for baby's arrival can be both an exciting and stressful time. You want the best for your little one, but I'm sure you don't want your home to be overrun with baby items either (we made that mistake the first time around!) but with careful planning, clever storage solutions and a consistent style, a nursery can fit well into about any design of the home and be such a lovely addition to the home too.
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