Nursery Room Themes

• Good nursery designs take more than assembling a crib. Jupiterimages/BananaStock/Getty Images

  A new baby requires a repurposing of living space to provide all the essentials an infant needs, including a nursery to house all the accouterments. While baby stores showcase an abundance of cute and cuddly design schemes with matching accessories, wall borders and artwork, good designers know how to mix styles and colors for a truly unique nursery.

Vintage

• New isn't always better, especially when it comes to design, although new baby items like high chairs, cribs and strollers are definitely safer than they were back in the day. While it's dangerous to use those antique essentials as they were intended, many can be repurposed as decorative-only design elements in a nursery to capture a vintage look. Antique strollers can be used to store receiving blankets and diapers for easy, open access, while old high chairs can be used as a doll and stuffed animal display stand. Vintage toys may have parts too small to meet the current Consumer Product Safety Commission guidelines, but up on a shelf or framed in a shadowbox, they add the right ambiance to a vintage nursery theme. Finish off the room with some old-fashioned baby clothes pressed in a picture frame or hung along a clothesline with pastel clothespins.

Modern

• No parenting book insists that nurseries need to be outfitted with sickeningly sweet pastel colors or cute and fluffy bunnies, so there's no reason not to opt for décor with modern lines. Many companies provide streamlined cribs and changing tables that can be outfitted with linens in the large, color-block patterns some experts insist are beneficial to an infant's cognitive development. The sleek, modern style doesn't end with furniture and bedding, as many manufacturers mimic the sharp design lines in their toys. One big plus to this nursery theme is that many of the makers of modern baby accessories are eco-conscious and utilize ergonomic designs.

Classic

• While vintage and modern each have their own appeal, there is nothing essentially wrong in opting for a classic nursery aesthetic. The design danger lies in buying up every item in a specific theme so the room looks more like a store display than a home. Parents who want a traditional theme like Noah's ark or pastel jungle animals should refrain from purchasing a whole set from one store and instead keep their eye out for theme-related items designed by a variety of manufacturers. A wall print done in primary colors can be paired with pastel bedding and not look ramshackle as long as the theme remains consistent. Tie the items together by choosing a wall color that complements all items in the room without exactly matching any of them, such as a sunshine yellow muted with white to work with pastels while still maintaining the vibrancy of its original primary hue.