Designing an Outdoor Themed Nursery

Because Every Baby Bear Needs an Outdoor Themed Nursery

That’s my opinion and I’m sticking to it. Okay, in reality your teeny tiny baby can have whatever kind of nursery and turn out just fine, but we really wanted to have some fun and design an outdoor themed nursery.

There is loads of inspiration for baby nursery’s on Pinterest so after you read this post be sure to follow up with that rabbit hole of all rabbit holes for even more tips, tricks, and inspiration.

Finding Your True North

When you are expecting your first child, there is a lot going on. You have a lot to prepare. You’re making your registry, planning a shower (virtual or not), and honestly trying to figure out how to prepare for the one million ways your life is going to change – for the better. Getting started on the nursery can be a challenge.

So, here’s what I recommend: Find your true north. Now that I’ve been overly dramatic and highly cliche, I’ll elaborate. First, find your theme. “Outdoor Nursery” is too broad. Picking a sub theme can help to give you a central idea that will inspire the color palette and the types of decor you bring into the room.

Think about what outdoor adventures your growing family loves to do. Do you like to hike and camp? Maybe the forest is your design theme and you go with greens and browns. For us, skiing and mountain biking are our go to adventures. After thinking about this for a while, we decided on the mountains as our theme.

We paired the mountains with the color palette for the rest of our home and came up with white, grey, and van deusen blue. We love van duesen blue – it’s a color from Benjamin Moore Paints.

Designing Your Outdoor Themed Nursery

Before you can start painting and decorating your nursery, it’s a good idea to plan out the furniture you need and want inside of the room. Nursery’s tend to be smaller rooms and it might take a game of Tetris to get everything just right. It did for us because we have a twin bed that we wanted to keep in Baby Bear’s Room as we planned not to bring him into our room.

I say this, because when you are planning a mural, you don’t want to put a ton of time into planning and painting a wall to have it covered up by all of the furniture. Unfortunately this advice comes from painting first and arranging second.

Once you have your furniture layout, you can also get a feel for where the major blocks of color will be in the room. For example, having a twin bed, and therefore a bedspread – that’s a big block of color, solid or patterned.

Knowing where your furniture will go can help you pick a wall to paint. For us, there was only one wall where the mural would really work so we went with it. I lost hours down the rabbit hole of pinterest before ultimately designing my own mural. First, I blocked it with painters tape and then tried out some of the colors. It looked great so I painted it while my husband was on night shift. I was nesting hard and he’s not a painter.

Shelf Space:

Baby books, customized piggy banks, music boxes, you’ll receive a good bit of gifts that need a home in your baby’s nursery. One or two shelves can help to display these items, but keep them off of the floor. This not only keeps the fragile things safe, but keeps clutter down.

We had two shelves in my former office in our old condo from Ikea. We primed these and painted them van deusen blue and they look great!

Additional Storage:

Baby and kid clothes are small. If the room has a closet, there will be a lot of wasted space here. We decided to make a few shelves in the bottom of the closet for bins and cloth baskets. We use these for toys, extra diapers and wipes, pumping accessories for me, baby shoes, baby bibs, etc. This is a great use of space for things that won’t easily hang or that could take up extra floor space in a smaller bedroom.

We still use the clothing rod in the closet for bulkier items like jackets, snowsuits, hats, etc. We also hang the next few sizes of clothing so that we can see what we have as Baby Bear grows out of his current clothes. This helps cut down on buying of extra footie pajamas when you really need shirts and sweatshirts for example.

Lighting:

During the day you want a bright overhead light that will illuminate the room. This will make it easier to see while changing diapers, dressing baby, reading books, and playing with toys. But, as the day gives way to evening and night, you want a softer lighting option that will allow you to see but not keep baby bear awake.

We were given a three way light that has a bulb and shade at the top, and a base that turns into a night light. We also were given a night light that is touch operated and has a phone app where you can change the colors.

As he grows and our decor evolves, I wanted a different lighting option. For his birthday I went to Crate and Barrel and found kiln dried birch branches that I wrapped in fairy lights. These are leaning in the corner behind his crib.

Decorating Your Outdoor Themed Nursery

Much of the contents of your baby’s nursery will be items that you add to your baby registry: crib sheets, diaper changing pads, floor rugs, night lights, etc. We did our registry on Target and Amazon before covid hit but doing it online made it easier to kind of see how it would all come together.

We already had a bedspread, curtains, and rug from when the nursery was simply a guest room. So we had that in place. They weren’t my favorite, but we didn’t want to redo these. Next we searched for the other pops of color We found Navy and grey diaper changing pad covers, solid crib sheets, and a star themed nightlight.

Tip Number One:

Baby things come in loads of patterns. If you have patterns on the floor and walls (curtains) its nice to go with simple solid colors in other places of the room.

You want this space to be a calm and relaxing space for your baby, but also for you. In the beginning your baby is only going to see in black and white and not very far in front of their face – so the colors and patterns in this room will really only be seen initially, by you. If you have bright patterns everywhere it might not be as calming.

Tip Number Two:

Make a space for yourself. This isn’t selfish. If you aren’t using a basinette in your room or co-sleeping, you are going to be spending a lot of time in this room and much of that time will be in the middle of the night. Middle of the night feedings mean you need a place to relax and get comfortable. This is the exact reason we worked so hard to make a twin bed work in his room. That and it will make transitioning out of the crib easier since the bed will be an old friend rather than something totally new.

Tip Number Three:

Don’t stress out about the room being perfect or 100% complete. Over the course of the next few years, you will buy new things, baby bear will receive gifts, and you’ll start to find new things and themes that they love. For example, we went with outdoors and blue, Baby Bear loves this but he also likes green and dinosaurs.

For his first birthday we went to target and I gave him two options for a new bedspread. He picked the forest green and navy blue bedspread over a blue option which I hadn’t planned on. He also picked a brown teddy bear over a green dinosaur. This might sound crazy, but babies have so little control over anything in their life (imagine if someone picked you up and moved you every time you tried to go where you wanted), that giving them little decisions can make them really happy.

Also, you’re going to get a gift that surprises you. We were gifted a beautiful night light that is silver when the finishings in his room are black. We chose to cherish the gift and its been so well loved by us all.

Unless you are a blogger and are making money off of the perfectly designed and themed nursery, take a deep breath. Know that you are going to live in this space and that it’s hardly every going to be perfect. Laundry, toys, boxes of diapers, they’ll all take up floor space. And that’s okay.

Tip Number 4:

Baby Bear is going to play in this space. You’re going to want to encourage play and time spent in this room as you establish a bedtime routine and try to reclaim your nights.

We try to pick fun toys that are thematic to the room that will foster imaginative play and exploration. This plush campfire set we found from Hunii Home on Amazon is banannas.

We picked the first few stuffed animals for Baby Bear to go with the theme, but added the dinos from Ikea when we saw how they made his face light up with glee. Now when we’re going to buy him something for his nursery, we give him two options and he has the power to choose.