Choosing My Nursery Wallpaper

I’m excited to share my work-in-progress nursery today. In case you missed it, I am pregnant and due around June 4 with a son. I am SO happy, excited, and nervous, as this is my first child and I’ve wanted to be a mother for years. Dreams come true! I feel grateful everyday but I have to admit that one of the most joyful aspects of preparing so far has been beginning to decorate his nursery. Almost immediately, I knew I wanted to do some kind of plant/botanical theme. And, I also wanted to wallpaper his room. I pretty much planned the entire room around the wallpaper, ha.

I was thrilled when I found out I would get to work with Spoonflower for this project. We are big fans of the Spoonflower Marketplace and have used a number of their wallpapers in our homes over the years (see Elsie’s girls bedroom here). There are a lot of things I love about them. First, there are SO many options, not only different designs but also different types of wallpaper (and other products). I love that you get to support independent artists and choose from an entire marketplace of work that directly supports those who designed it. And I love Spoonflower’s commitment to sustainable printing. Spoonflower is offering our readers a special code, between now and April 6— you can use the code WP15ABM at checkout for 15% off Spoonflower wallpaper.

I pretty quickly fell in love with this design from Red Briar Studio, but I thought I’d share with you some other wallpaper design options I considered as well. On the Spoonflower website you can order samples of almost any wallpaper you are considering, and I actually love to do this and hang the sample up in the room so I can see what it looks like in the space (with the light throughout the day, and the color with furniture or other elements in the room). You can also use the samples for small gift wrapping or even framed for little art vignettes after your done so you don’t have to feel like you "wasted" anything while making sure you love your wallpaper choice (before ordering the full amount your space may need).

Here are the samples of all the wallpaper designs I considered. You can find them all here. As you can see, I was set on something with plants and I was wanting something that felt a little bit vintage as that feels right with my 1920s bungalow home.

From top to bottom: Vintage Botanical Wildflowers, Bees and Wildflowers, and Soft Eucalyptus Watercolor.

The two I went back and forth on were the Vintage Botanicals and Bees and Wildflowers, but I did also love the watercolor/handpainted vibe of the Soft Eucalyptus option.

From top to bottom: Cottage Print, Floral Forest, and Into the Woods.

For these options, I was considering something with a colored background (rather than white), but in the end I decided white was more what I wanted to go with for my space.

I ordered prepasted removable smooth wallpaper. This is recommended for nurseries as it’s durable and long lasting but also removable, and you can recycle it! Spoonflower also offers peel and stick removable woven wallpaper as well as non-pasted traditional pebble wallpaper.

You can find instructions on the Spoonflower website for measuring your space and also to learn more about these different types of wallpaper they offer. There are a number of different options and some things you may want to consider is how long you plan to keep the wallpaper in your space (like if you are renting and need to be able to remove it one day, etc.).

I had my wallpaper professionally hung with a local installer I’ve worked with many times. You absolutely can hang wallpaper yourself, and in fact, your order will come with helpful tips and instructions. But given I was six months pregnant when my paper was installed, and I got tired just putting together the rocking chair (which came in only three pieces, it was not hard I am just tired, OK!) I opted to pay a professional instead. You do you.

Once the paper was fully installed, the room felt immediately SO cheery! Maybe it’s hormones but I cried a little when I first saw it all up. I am SO in love with this wallpaper and I am already imagining all the memories my son and I will make in this room.

Obviously, I am not done with the nursery. I promise to share a final tour and I’ll link everything in that post. But I truly feel like the wallpaper is the HERO of this room and I am just thrilled to share more about it with you all, so thanks for letting me gush a little. xo. Emma