Baby Nursery Ideas: Nautical Nursery Decor

Posted by Nicole Stiffle on

One of the most exciting (and daunting) tasks for new parents is choosing how to decorate the space to bring their newborn home to. The good news: with Instagram and Pinterest, there’s a growing sea of baby nursery ideas out there. The bad news: it’s an understatement to say it can be an overwhelming to navigate.

When we were expecting our first baby, we didn’t know gender, so we didn’t want to go too pink, or too blue with our theme. We did want select pops of color to brighten up our neutral “baby” space (which, like many first time parents, was the corner of our bedroom). Since I grew up near the beach and obsessed with the sharks, whales and tropical fish, we decided to go with a nautical nursery decor.

I couldn’t find what I was looking for in the crowded minted and etsy marketplaces, and as an artist I was disappointed by the quality of a lot of the nursery art I found. This is what ultimately inspired Wee Wild Ones (but more on that in another post.)

Like many first time parents, I wanted the best for our baby-to-be. I decided to roll up my sleeves and hand paint two fish for the nursery: a clownfish (a.k.a. Finding Nemo) and a regal blue tang (a.k.a. Finding Dory, yes we’re Pixar fans.)



Flash forward, it’s eighteen months later, and our daughter Mae (yes, we had a girl) LOVES her fish art  prints (pronounced “feesh.”) One of Mae’s favorite  things to do is visit the aquarium at the California Academy of Sciences and look for fish in the big tanks, and then come home and point them out on her walls.We kept the rest of the palette in the blue and seafoam green family, which rounded out the nautical nursery decor of our little space. You could also totally go with navy, grey and white for a nautical nursery, but I personally favor the softer of the blue hues.

Since those first two fish, the Wee Wild Ones family has grown to include a moorish idol and a triggerfish (both tropical fish), an orca whale and an emperor penguin dad and baby. All of these little guys are great for nautical nursery decor, and available in a variety of sizes and colors, making it easy to make them work with a variety of color schemes.


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