Hip and Modern Baby Nursery Painting Ideas

How you paint your baby nursery provides the base for your entire baby nursery decorating theme. Need some ideas for baby nursery painting that are modern and unique? Look no further. I want to let you in on some great tips to achieve enviable style in your DIY baby nursery.

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Baby Nursery Painting - The Basics

Whichever way you choose to paint your baby nursery you need to know the basics. You need to know how to get started on painting the nursery. You want to come out of this with a nursery that looks professionally painted. Right?

Right.

Whether you intend to use decorative techniques in you baby nursery painting, or even painting a baby nursery wall mural, you will need to start by giving the entire room a new coat of paint.

• paint - 1 gallon per about 400 square feet

• paint brushes and rollers

• drop cloth

• masking tape

Start by clearing out the room you intend to paint. If there is already furniture in the room and you do not want to move it all just move everything to the center of the room and cover it with drop cloths. You will need a drop cloth to place under the section you are working on as well.

It is usually good practice to wash the walls down with a sponge and warm soap and water before you start painting.

Remove any electrical outlet plates and light switch covers. Use your masking tape to cover over the edges of moldings and windows. Also mask off where the ceiling meets the wall so that you do not accidentally paint the ceiling. It looks pretty messy when this happens.

You want to begin by "cutting in" Cutting in is when you paint all of the outer edges of the room with a paint brush before painting the bulk of the walls with a roller. Basically you are going to paint about 1/2 a foot to a foot out from all of the edges you just covered with masking tape. This way when you paint with the roller, you do not need to get too close to the floor, ceiling, or moldings. You wouldn't want to accidentally paint the wrong places!
Once you have "cut in" all the edges go ahead and paint the rest of the room with a roller. Hopefully you will be painting this room as a team with Hubby so that while one of you is cutting in, the other can be painting with the roller. You'll get the job done so much faster. Plus, it helps to be able to switch jobs every once in awhile. It's particularly tiring doing this kind of work while you're pregnant. But don't worry you won't be able to help yourself but to get to work when you go through your nesting stage!

Once you have the room painted you are ready to go ahead and get creative with your baby nursery painting!

Creative Baby Nursery Painting

Using Color

Maybe you want a modern look and feel to your baby nursery decor, but you do not want to go all outdoors when it comes to decorative baby nursery painting. I know, this is tiring work when your pregnant, and not everyone will have the energy for it.

One way to get a great modern contemporary feel is by using color alone. Stray away from the predictable pastel pinks, blue's, and off whites. Opt for something bold and bright. Pick a color that is unexpected!

If an entire room painted in hot pink is too much for you, take it a more calm direction and pick just one wall to accent. You can have three walls in a more muted color with one wall to punch it up! You can even calm that wall down a bit by placing some curtains with a more mellow color on the brightly colored wall, to calm things down a bit and tie everything together.

Using Masking Tape

There are several ways to utilize masking tape in decorative painting techniques. Wait for you initial paint job to dry and get to work...

Create a faux chair rail

This is a great way to divide up a room into separate colors. Again, say you want to use bright bold color choices, but not for an entire room. Just divide up the room with a faux chair rail technique, and only paint the bottom half of the room in a bright color. Paint the top half in a mute color.
To create the chair rail you need masking tape, a measuring tape, and a level. Start by measuring from the floor up the wall and making a pencil mark where you want the chair rail to sit. Repeat this step over and over about three or four feet apart all the way around the room, or just where you want the faux chair rail to be painted. You need to take great care in making each mark exactly the same measurement on the wall so the rail will appear straight and level as can be.

With your measuring tape in hand start from one corner and stick the tape to the wall horizontally using the pencil marks as a guideline. Once you have the tape adhered to one wall use the level to make sure it is indeed straight on the wall. Move on to the next wall and repeat until the masking tape is running along all four walls.
Now ask yourself how thick you want the chair rail to be. Essentially it is only going to be a stripe painted along the wall. Repeat the same steps with the masking tape all over again a few inches above the existing tape.

Now simply paint the upper portion of the wall one color, and the bottom another, be very careful not to paint in between the two strips of masking tape. Wait for the paint to dry and remove the masking tape. Viola! You've got a neat baby nursery painting technique that adds a nice pop of color to the room.

Create Stripes

This same kind of technique as the one outlined above can be applied to make vertical stripes as well. Or why not make the faux chair rail, and then add thick vertical stripes along the bottom of the room! Get creative!

Create Stencils

Here's how you do it. Search through books, go to the library, or even search the web. Come up with some cute pictures that will make great shapes for a stencil. Need some ideas? Think butterflies, dinosaurs, sunshine, flowers, the alphabet...

Print out the pictures you like. Take your print outs (or book pages) to a local copy shop and have them reproduced and enlarged to a size that will look good on your walls. Get several copies. It can't hurt to get them copied onto slightly heavier weight paper as well.

Side Note: Some copy stores can even make super over-sized copies - for those of you making giant baby nursery wall murals.

Now that you have your copies you can create the stencils. Use a pair of sharp scissors or even an Xacto knife to cut the stencil out. There are two ways you can use them:

You can either use the outline and paint into the stencil

OR

You can stick the cut out shape to the wall with some temporary adhesive and then paint over the stencil. Remove the paper from the wall and you have the shape left under it!

You can indeed use this baby nursery painting technique in some very interesting ways if you get your imagination running.

UPDATE: Since writing this page I have discovered that I am once again PREGNANT! Great news for me but unfortunately I will not be doing any painting myself in the very near future. I'll be too busy chasing a toddler around the house and many of us know this is very tiring work. Besides, I probably should not hang around paint fumes too much. I had Hubby paint the nursery for me but since we do not know the sex yet, he painted a nice neutral green color. He's not too keen or ambitious when it comes to painting the nursery. :)

So this leads me to invite you all to share your baby nursery painting techniques here on this site. Got a unique technique? or a cool theme? From bright and beautiful, to elegant and classic, I want to see em' all! Not to mention, I'm sure some of our visitors would love some inspiration for their own baby nursery painting projects! Share your pictures and tell us your story!

Go here to share your baby nursery with us!

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