Boy Nursery Wall Art That Is Not All Blue

Wall art for a boy's nursery works best when the subject does the work and blue is only one colour in it. Pick one theme with a character in it, such as ducks, teddy bears or a football jersey, add his name or initial, and let sage, ochre or brown carry as much of the room as the blue does.

A girl's nursery usually gets florals, a palette and a mood. A boy's nursery too often gets "blue", which is a colour and not an idea. The rooms that hold up are the ones where somebody chose a subject first and let the colour follow.

What should go on the walls of a boy's nursery?

Start with one subject and stay with it across the whole wall. Animals, sport and outdoor themes all work because each comes with its own colours and its own characters, so you are never left choosing a shade of blue in the abstract.

Three subjects carry most of what I paint for boys' rooms:

• Waterfowl and woodland. Mallards and woodland animals, in greens, browns and a little teal. It reads outdoorsy without being a hunting lodge, and the duck's green head is the strongest colour in the room.
• Vintage teddy bears. Bears playing ball either side of an initial. Warm brown and cream, with a ball as the accent. This is the softest of the three and the one that sits most easily beside a rocking chair.
• The jersey. A football or soccer shirt with his name and a number on the back. It is graphic, it reads from across the room, and it is the one an older child is still happy to have up.

All three are in the Fern & Nest baby boy nursery prints.

Does a boy's nursery have to be blue?

No. Blue is a perfectly good colour for a boy's room, but it works far better as one of three than as the only one. A room where the walls, the bedding, the rug and every print are blue ends up looking cold, especially in a north-facing room where the light is already cool.

The fix is to choose two partner colours from the art and repeat them elsewhere:

• Sage green is the easiest partner. It softens blue without fighting it, and it moves the room away from "baby" and towards "boy's bedroom" without you doing anything else.
• Warm brown or tan, from wood, wicker or a teddy bear, warms the whole palette. One wooden frame does more for a blue room than a second blue print.
• Ochre or mustard in small amounts, such as a cushion or a lampshade, gives the eye somewhere to land.

Several of the jersey prints come in blue, sage and lavender for exactly this reason. Lavender sounds like an odd choice for a boy until you see it next to navy and oak, where it reads as a dusty grey-purple rather than as pink's cousin.

Should the name go on the art, or on its own print?

On its own print, as part of a set. A name or an initial hung between two pictures reads as part of the room. A name on every print reads as a label, and it ties every piece to one child, which matters if a second baby might share or inherit the room later.

The usual arrangement I build is a set of three: subject, name, subject. Mallard, letter, mallard. Bear, letter, bear. The initial sits in the middle, where the eye goes first, and the two subject prints frame it. If you want the full name rather than an initial, keep it on the centre print and make sure it is one of the larger sizes, because lettering below about 8x10 in (20 x 25 cm) gets hard to read from the doorway.

The duck version shows the arrangement most clearly: mallard prints with the initial hung between them. It is the mallard duck nursery print with a personalised initial, and it comes printed and shipped or as a digital download.

What size prints go above a crib?

Aim to fill about two-thirds of the crib's width. A standard crib is around 135 cm (53 in) long, so two-thirds is about 90 cm (35 in).

Worked through with real sizes:

• Three 8x10 in prints (20 x 25 cm each) with 5 cm (2 in) gaps span about 71 cm (28 in). Slightly narrow for a full crib, right for a mini crib.
• Three 11x14 in prints (28 x 36 cm each) with 5 cm gaps span about 94 cm (37 in), which lands almost exactly on two-thirds of a standard crib.
• One 16x20 in print (40 x 50 cm) on its own covers only about 40 cm of width. On its own it looks lost above a crib; it works better above a dresser or a changing table.

Those are paper sizes. A frame adds roughly 2.5 cm (1 in) on each side, so measure your frames before you mark the wall. Hang the bottom edge about 25 to 30 cm (10 to 12 in) above the crib rail, and use frames with acrylic rather than glass over a crib, fixed with two hooks so they cannot swing.

Where do blankets and keepsakes fit in?

A name blanket is the other place the theme shows up, and it is worth matching to the wall rather than buying it separately. A hunting blanket with ducks and deer beside the mallard prints, or a teddy blanket beside the bear set, makes the room look planned rather than gathered.

Size matters more than design here. The 30x40 in (76 x 102 cm) blanket is the photo-prop and pram size. The 50x60 in (127 x 152 cm) is the one that becomes a sofa blanket later, and the 60x80 in (152 x 203 cm) is a proper bed throw for when the crib goes. Woodland, farm animal and teddy designs are among the personalised name blankets, from about CA$58.

What if you are not sure yet, or the room will be shared?

Then lean on the subject and hold back on the name. Bears and ducks are not gendered; the sports motifs and a navy-heavy palette are what push a room towards "boy". If the room may later be shared with a sister, or you simply have not found out yet, choose animal prints in brown, cream and sage, and add the initial later as a single print you can swap.

The mother-and-baby animal prints in the gender-neutral nursery collection are built for that brief: a bear with its cub or a mother duck, with no lettering at all.

If you are buying for someone else's baby rather than your own room, the safe choice is the name blanket or a single initial print, because neither depends on knowing how the nursery is decorated. Both are in baby gifts, and the digital versions are sent as a file, so nothing has to be shipped.

What should you decide first?

Decide the subject before the colour. Ducks, bears or the jersey: once that is settled, the palette mostly chooses itself, and every other piece in the room has something to agree with. Then measure the crib wall and pick the print size from the numbers above, not from the photographs.

It is also worth thinking one step ahead. A boy's nursery becomes a boy's bedroom sooner than anyone expects, and the subject prints move across while the baby-specific pieces do not. I worked through which is which in what happens to nursery art in a big-kid room, which is worth reading before you choose how much of the wall to spend on lettering.