Small Nursery Design Ideas That Will Stimulate Baby’s Brain

Decorating a newborn’s nursery is one of the last times you'll be calling the shots. After all, before you know it, they'll soon be putting up paintings, posters, and opinions of their own. You might think that your newborn is oblivious to the small nursery design elements you've selected, but you're wrong.

Scientists say that most of the newborn baby’s learning is visual. So, it’s important to pay attention to the nursery decor you choose for your new baby’s surroundings.

Since visual development starts with the recognition of shapes and patterns, minimalist, modern, and even cubist nursery decor are excellent for newborn brain stimulation. Later on, you can easily repurpose it in other areas of the house.

Start Planning Your Small Nursery Room

Once you’ve chosen a room or an area to set up for your newborn’s nursery, it’s time to do some planning. A well-thought-out nursery pays dividends later when you’re changing diapers and trying to get the little one to sleep.

Start with the walls and floors. If walls need to be painted, do that first.  If carpeting needs to be updated or new rugs put down, get that out of the way too. Then you can move on to laying out the furnishings.

This is a crucial engineering task as caregivers will often be alone while trying to change a wriggling and often uncooperative little one, so be sure everything you need is within reach.

Cozy is good. Cluttered is not.  And remember, this space needs to be easy to keep clean too.

Visualizing the Room Decor

After the walls are painted, and the floors are taken care of, it's time to get to work laying out the furnishing, lighting, and window treatments. Then it's time to think about how to liven up your newborn baby’s nursery walls.

Take a few pictures of the nursery walls and head over to Wall Decor Galore.  They have a fantastic visualizer tool that allows you to upload your room photos and see exactly how a piece of art will look on your walls.

Decorating Themes Your Newborn Baby’s Nursery

Research has shown that a newborn’s visual cortex and the pathways connecting other brain regions are not fully developed at birth. As is the case with other aspects of human cognition, stimulus is necessary to establish the connections that will undergird later learning.

Newborns start by comprehending shapes and sharp contrast. They distinguish contours and borders more than shades or textures.

Black and white minimalist art is perfect for newborns to master eye coordination and learn to follow edges and discern shapes.

So, don’t be afraid to hang a bold modern art print in your small nursery design. For the first six months or so, this is the most effective stimulus you can choose for your nursery decor, and later you have the bonus of moving it to another room where you can give it a whole new life.

At three months of age, you want to start introducing color while still sticking to bold shapes and contours.

Keep in mind that in addition to selecting artwork that you can repurpose to other rooms, you can help keep your wall art decor affordable by purchasing less expensive rolled paper prints that you can mount or frame yourself.

Newborn Baby’s Love to Look at Faces

In addition to patterns, newborns also have a natural preference for gazing at faces, be they human, animal, or fantasy. Framed or frameless wall art prints of friendly-looking woodland creatures are popular for decorating the newborn’s nursery.

This collection of woodland nursery art from Anna Babich is one of our favorites. Another favorite collection of cute animal nursery art is these fun and colorful designs from Galina Kovalev.

If you need some small nursery design inspiration, check out Pinterest.

Newborn to Toddlers

As your baby grows and gets older, their visual perception abilities will quickly expand.  Around six months of age is an excellent time to start stimulating their attention to detail and comprehension of relationships.

More complex scenes and characters are appropriate choices for the six to twelve-month-old baby. Coordinate themes using several different prints to help your baby understand connections and relationships between objects and characters.

For example, you might choose three different animal prints with different color balloons in each scene. You can then help your child learn to spot the balloons, sort out the differences, and learn which balloons go with which critter.

Besides wall decor in the classic sense, you can use fiber art to add warmth, comfort, and a bit of tradition to your newborn's room. Fiber encompasses art in various sizes, colors, and shapes like crochet baby blankets, tapestries, embroideries, or dream catchers.

Baby School

Personalized name decor is a great way to introduce young toddlers to the alphabet and the written word.

From there, you can move on to word art teaching values such as love, dreams, kindness, and achievement.

Use Nursery Wall Decorative Features That Grow With Your Baby

A gallery wall of art is perfect for decorating a child’s room. A gallery wall can capture their attention and help them learn to focus and look for detail.

Change and replace items to keep their attention or adapt as your child grows and their needs and tastes start to change. As they get older, involve them in the process to help teach them about collaboration.

Your newborn baby will soon become a toddler and moves from the crib to a bed, all the time interacting with their artistic companions. They’ll start naming them while teddy bears get invited to tea.

What Can You Use to Decorate Your Newborn Baby’s Nursery?

Modern newborn baby nursery wall décor goes better with the room's overall design, including furnishings, wall paint color, and other features. With wall art, you can build the nursery's aesthetics, while patterned or framed prints can elevate its ambiance.

You can either buy stylish wall art in every design and for each budget. Also, decorating your newborn's nursery can become a DIY project for you and your partner.

A few suggestions on finding or creating stellar newborn baby nursery wall art include:

Wallpaper

The easiest method of decorating your newborn baby nursery walls is wallpaper, and there are multiple options available with fun scenes or patterned prints.

Artistic wallpaper creates a stylized theme and will fill the baby's room with bold accents while adding texture to the walls.

Although a time-consuming decorative method, wallpaper is sturdy and will last longer without tiring your child’s sense of adventure, especially if the design is timeless.

You can either hire a professional to paper your newborn baby’s nursery prints wallpaper or give it some of your DIY spirit.

Wallpaper has various price ranges according to the style, quality of the paper, print, and how easy it is to remove.

Wall-Hung String Lights

Drape string lights behind a furniture piece or hang them like curtains down the newborn nursery wall décor. This will create a dreamy, delicate ambiance for your little one.

String lights will also work well as frames spread over the entire nursery or around wall decor.

Nursery string art lights with malleable wire strands will also allow you to shape them into icons or words using a bit of hardware and some creativity.

Ensure that string lights are out of reach as your little one will soon be holding everything around them before they start crawling all over the place.

Framed Wall Prints

A simple, quick, and wallet-friendly way to decorate your newborn baby nursery walls is framed prints. You can use your favorite family photos to add personality to the room and greet the baby each time they open their eyes.

You can also complete a photoshoot of pets, parks, or flowers, seeking objects that complement the nursery animal prints or the general theme and décor.

If you are not handy, commission artwork, photos, or find stock pictures that can be printed and framed.

For framed prints, the icing on the cake is the frame you select. A bold flourish vintage or a thin minimalistic black frame ties décor together and accentuates the nursery.

Garland

While being super simplistic to create and customize, the garland is a favorite small nursery design element. Other than custom, easy-to-hang, and adorable flags that have your baby's name on them, you can get garlands of any color palette and materials like pom poms, beads, stars, or tassels. Though if you have a rare baby girl name and you want to show it off, or even if it’s a boy, then a flag would be a great choice to decorate the baby’s room.

Add flair to your wall decorations for a baby's room by layering different textures and colors of garland over each other to cover the entire nursery's wall.

You can place garlands or wreaths in a frame shape around windows or highlight other statement wall art pieces.

Do-It-Yourself Nursery Art

By personalizing your art, you'll add character to your small nursery design. Plus, such an exercise can be a photo moment for your child's photo album.

Using your color palette and a blank canvas that contrasts with the room's theme, you can make abstract art for your baby's nursery.

Write inspirational calligraphy baby room quotes on stationary, framing, and then hanging them on the nursery walls. Stamp a heart using your painted hands for a cute DIY canvas art idea, and once your newborn has arrived, a smaller heart can be created using the feet.

DIY canvas allows you to customize wall hangings nursery with words like ‘I'll always be there for you,' in your handwriting, a souvenir for baby so they'll always know they have your support.

Nursery Wall Stickers

Wall art decals are easy to install and remove, completing your newborn nursery decor without overwhelming the general theme like murals.

Popular and readily available baby nursery decals come in outdoorsy nature styles, with trees, mountains, clouds, and birds being the favorites.

To give the newborn baby nursery’s walls character, you can get monogram decals that initial its name for further personalization.

Nursery Wall Shelves

Not only do shelves keep items well stored and other surfaces clear of clutter, but they also act as wall décor.

Floating wall shelves can be hung off-center or at different lengths, adding dynamism to your small nursery design.

You can also install regular-shaped or abstract floating shelves, which act as a decoration all by themselves.

Shelves will later come in handy to put your toddler's playthings away from the floor. You can stack decorative tins of crayons or building blocks in an attractive display.

Final Thoughts on Small Nursery Design Ideas

Art is an important component of your newborn baby’s environment. Investing time and care in curating a proper selection of decor will have a meaningful impact on your child’s development.

Understanding and adapting to their rapidly changing needs is an integral part of caring for your newborn. Happy decorating!

What nursery themes or color palates do you prefer?