Who doesn’t love a bit of decorating? Prepping your blank canvas and preparing to fill a room with personal touches that will make it the perfect haven. So when it comes to decorating baby rooms, things just get even more exciting. Not only are you getting to prepare a special room for your bundle of joy, this might be the first major thing you’ve done to make baby’s mark on your home – it’s real!

An abundance of teddy bears and blankets aside, how to decorate a baby room is about far more than a cot and a changing table, it’s about little touches of love to make your baby feel happy, safe and comfortable in his or her new home. Here are our top tips for how to make baba’s little haven perfectly heavenly.

Goodbye mellow yellow?

For parents who don’t know the gender of their baby, yellow is often the go-to colour when it comes to decorating. It’s bright, cheerful and actually a lot more interesting than stereotypical pinks and blues. But why stick with yellow? If you’re a creative spirit, then your little one can share in your love of colour. Greens, purples and oranges, the whole rainbow spectrum, in fact, can look fantastic in a baby room, and there’s no reason to stick to just one either, paint each wall a different colour, or get creative with some masking tape.

You don’t even need to be bright to be a creative wiz, even grey baby rooms can look fantastic when teamed with light furnishings and accessories. Not in the mood for painting while being six months pregnant? No worries, a baby room poster or two can definitely spruce up any space to be perfect for a new arrival.

Decals, darling!

Once your colour is up, although they look just as fantastic on plain white walls, try a decal. These little pieces of wall decorating magic are easy to put up, just as easy to remove when baby is no longer so little (or if you are renting and can’t paint your walls), and make even the smallest or most hurriedly decorated nursery room look like they’ve been given the 5-star design treatment. Decals don’t have to be the huge images of forests, flowers or typography, even something as simple as a few scattered stars can give the room some real design spark.

The perfect personal touch

Adorable as baby rooms can be, it’s easy to end up with a room that can seem a touch generic. It may seem like there isn’t much you can do to personalise the room for the special little person who hasn’t even been born yet – but mummy and daddy can still leave their mark. Photo prints of the proud parents can make up a gallery wall, just be sure to add a baby photo when your bundle of joy does arrive. If your own parents have sentimentally kept hold of your baby things, they can be a great way of decorating the room, just frame them up and voila, multi-generational interior design magic.

Preferential parental treatment

Cute touches, bright colours and cartoon characters may seem like baby room essentials, but it’s your house at the end of the day! Maybe you’ve just done up your house in a refreshing nautical theme and see no reason to exclude the nursery from that, so don’t. If you want a stylish and elegant nursery, free of stereotypical colours and motifs, don’t hold back. While the nursery is, in many expectant parents’ minds, the place where you baby will rest and play all day, your little one is going to be wherever you are for the first few years of his or her life.

So if it is more beneficial for your nursery to also double up as a workspace, office or guest room (provided you can wheel the cot out at night!), then go for it. So long as there is nothing likely to cause trouble for curious little ones (sharp corners or overhanging ornaments, for example) decorating your baby room can be just as much for you as for your bump.

Ready to get started on baby’s own room? Whatever your style, make it a place that you know your little one will love!