Painting the Nursery: Does Color Matter to a Baby?

Colors and Your Nursery. What Impact Can They Have?

Different colors have varying effects on our emotions, energy levels, and ability to relax (among other things) and can also affect our mind and physical well being. These aspects are important when selecting color palettes for your baby’s room decor, particularly in the nursery where they will spend most of their time sleeping. We’ve researched colors and their impact on baby (see below) which may help you decide which nursery color to select. Once you do, check out Olympic Paints cool Paint Your Own Room tool, which lets you play with paint colors online! Another neat tool is Better Homes and Gardens “Color Finder”. You have to sign up (it’s free) and give them your name and address, but we like the tool so much that it’s worth the sign up!

Warm Colors

Colors such as orange, red and yellow are energizing and stimulating and perfect for use in larger rooms. Because of this, they’re not often used in smaller ‘sleeping’ rooms such as a nursery. Some children are more affected by colors than others, just like some children have a higher level of energy than others. It doesn’t take much for high energy children to become stimulated (or over-stimulated!).

Pink is the color associated with all things girly and traditionally was the color of choice for use in baby girl nurseries. It evokes feelings of warmth, relaxation, and femininity and also has a calming effect. In recent years, pink has been replaced by more gender neutral colors, or has been complemented with grey. However, if you love the idea of a traditional pink nursery, you can’t go wrong with this soft baby color!

Cool Colors

Cooler colors include blue, green, purple and white. Darker shades of cooler colors are often used as secondary colors, for example, painting only one wall in a dark color can be very effective. Remember, though, dark paint makes a room look and feel smaller.

Gray – which is a very popular color now in nursery decor –  inspires calm and relaxation. Gray is a fabulous color because you can accessorize with virtually any other color. The opportunities to create a nursery with gray paint are just endless.

White creates a light, bright and airy feeling, and most agree you can never use too much white!

Mixing Colors

Cool colors can be used in combination with warmer tones to create a beautiful even balance, and vice versa. You can also use varying shades of the same color to create depth and ambience within a room. With the ultimate goal to create a relaxing, calm environment and one that encourages baby to sleep, opt to mix patterns or bright colors with solid and neutral base colors.

Once you choose your room color, you can focus on your crib bedding. Liz and Roo Fine Baby Bedding offers both 4pc. “sets” (crib rail cover, crib skirt, minky blanket and crib sheet) and separates in a variety of modern colors and designs that range from bright to gender neutral. You can see all our crib bedding designs online.