Nursery Inspiration for Baby Girl

I’m so excited to finally be sharing the inspiration for baby girl’s nursery today! If you follow me on Instagram then you’ve already seen a few things we’ve picked up in the last few weeks, like the antique dresser and rug. I’ve been so nervous to actually see my ideas come together and putting this blog post together has definitely been helpful for really seeing how I’m envisioning the space! 

When to Decorate a Nursery

Deciding when to decorate a nursery is going to look different for each family, and even each baby, in my experience. With our first baby, we knew that we were moving quite quickly after he was born. And despite having tons of nursery ideas for small rooms, we didn’t really feel like we had the space to create a nursery for such a short period of time. So I didn’t get to design my son’s nursery until he was six months old and we were settled into our new home.

While we won’t actually be using the nursery in its full capacity until Baby M is a few months old, it was important to me to go ahead and start designing and pulling together her space. I’ll also be creating a few baby specific areas in our master bedroom for when she’s a newborn. However, babies come with a lot of stuff and we just frankly wouldn’t have anywhere to put all of her things if we weren’t already going ahead and setting up her nursery. So nursery organization is one of my main reasons for setting up her room ahead of time. I also think that with a newborn and a toddler, we will be spending a lot of time in her nursery just for general family time. 

Nursery Organization Ideas

We are blessed to have pretty good size closets in each of the bedrooms in our base housing at Fort Wainwright but we will still be utilizing a lot of small room nursery ideas to help make sure Baby M’s nursery is well organized and functional. We purchased a fairly small dress just so we could maximize the amount of floor space in her room so we will be relying heavily on the closet for most of our nursery organization. Pinterest is a great resource for finding nursery organization ideas and I’ve already started implementing some affordable nursery organization ideas that I’ve found there in the closet. We also already have a plan in place for how we will organize, store, and rotate through the different clothing sizes which is something we didn’t do for our son and I know is going to make a huge difference. 

Nursery Inspiration 

When it was time to start designing the nursery I had no idea what nursery theme ideas to even go for. I knew I didn’t want to do the typical boho girl’s nursery and I definitely didn’t want it to be fully pink. So I started looking for nursery inspiration the way I always do, by searching for nursery ideas on Pinterest. If you didn’t know, Pinterest is the 5th largest search engine in the world and it’s my go-to for any time I need design inspiration. To my surprise, the nursery inspiration for girls that was standing out to me was all way more on the traditional side than I was expecting. The two pins that really sparked my inspiration for Baby M’s nursery were these three: 

From there I started pinning inspiration and came up with a mood board that ended up being very French feeling and very inspired by the 2006 Marie Antoinette movie. So if we’re going to give this girl nursery inspiration a name I guess… Antique French? I guess it could also be called somewhat Bridgerton Esque too now that I think about it.  I don’t know if that’s a thing and if you’re more home decor savvy you may be able to come up with a better name for it so I’m interested to know what you think! 

Click here to find all of the photos for my Nursery Mood Board on my Pinterest!

A few things I really love about this aesthetic that I want to incorporate:

• Wallpaper - I’m not sure if this is actually going to be doable, we may just have to settle for painting one wall instead but I love the look of each of these wallpapers in the inspiration pictures and it really lends itself to that very french regal feeling that I’m going for. We also went with a different rug than what I had originally planned (which was a whole fiasco) so I’m afraid so much pattern in a small area would overwhelm the space.

• Hats - I’ve been obsessed with hats lately. I thrifted on that I think perfectly fits this nursery vibe and I have one from my late grandmother that I plan on attaching a blue bow to. I’ll be using them both as wall decor.

• Feminine details - As I said, I didn’t want this nursery to be overly girly. That being said, I do love the fine feminine details of this mood board like the lace details and the antique fans.

Things to Buy for Nursery

As far as what we need to buy for the nursery, I love this checklist from The Bump. I was originally planning on buying everything for this nursery new but as we’ve been decluttering and organizing our home and as I’ve seen the theme and idea for the nursery come together, I’ve realized that we have quite a few things already that will work. 

• Crib - Because of issues with shipping a crib to Alaska and what we’re limited to finding locally, I think we’re going to try and use the crib we have from my son. It’s gray which I’m not sure is the exact vibe I’m going for so I’m thinking about doing a bit of DIY magic to it in order to make it fit the theme better. 

• Chair - We have the same glider that we used in J’s nursery but I’m not convinced it will actually work with the nursery design because of the wood tone. So I think we’re going to try and fix up the antique blue velvet chair that’s been in my family for decades and use the glider in our room while she’s a newborn. It needs to be raised to a slightly higher level and the legs need to be replaced but I think if we stain the legs a similar color to the top of the antique dresser we have on layaway that it will really bring those two pieces together in the space.

• Lamp - As I mentioned, we’ve gone with an antique dresser for the nursery which means that the actual surface area to put things like a lamp on is going to be slim. We’ll need the dresser top for the changing pad so I’m thinking a standing lamp will be the way to go for the nursery. I like this one from Target but need to look around a little more before ordering anything. 

And that’s the plan so far! I’m so curious to see what your thoughts are on what I’ve put together so far. I plan on updating you guys regularly on the progress so make sure you’re following me on Instagram as well as checking the blog!