Where to Find Nursery Inspiration

When it comes to where to find nursery inspiration, your mind likely goes to the very obvious — “just Google it”. But in my experience, you see the same results over and over again and get bombarded with sponsored product listings that aren’t all that relevant. So I wanted to touch on some alternative websites and ways that will help you go beyond the obvious results and find some “hidden gems”.

Some general tips for refining your search to get the best results include

• adding “boy”, “girl”, or “gender-neutral” to your search query
• including a color (such as the wall color) to your search query
• search for specific nursery items, such as bedding, wall decor, etc.

Now that you have some searching skills, here’s where to find nursery inspiration online.

 

Instagram Hashtags

There’s an Instagram hashtag for everything these days, and nurseries are no exception. For example, when looking at inspiration for Stella’s nursery, Pinterest and Google kept pulling up the same 3 nurseries again and again. To further my search and find some lesser-known nursery photos and ideas, I turned to searching Instagram hashtags. Sure, #lemonnursery only has 23 posts, but I viewed each one and saw the other related hashtags to further my search. For Henry’s woodland nursery, on the other hand, there are over 100,000 posts and plenty of inspiration.

 

Pinterest

This one is a “duh”, as Pinterest is a visual search engine, but I didn’t want to leave it off the list. I’ve found some tricks though for really narrowing down my Pinterest searches to get what I want.

• If you’re toying between a few paint colors, use Pinterest to search for “[paint color name]”, “[paint color name] & “nursery”, etc. You’ll see real-life photos of rooms with this particular color and can then get further inspiration for furniture that matches, decorations, and color schemes. I did this with Henry’s room which was already painted (we decided not to repaint it once I saw how versatile the shade really was!)
• Once you find a pin you like/one that fits the style of what you’re looking for, scroll down the page to see “More Like This”, which shows visually-similar pins and pins with similar meta data (aka keywords and titles).
• After you’ve pinned a few items to a board, go to the board and click the “More ideas” button above the pins to see similar images.

 

Nursery-Specific Blogs and Websites

Did you know this was a niche? Much like the niche websites for wedding themes and ideas, these nursery idea websites and blogs include real-life inspiration from parents around the world. Here are a few of my favorites:

• Project Nursery Blog – You can use this blog in a few different ways: you can scroll through the latest posts, use the search tool to narrow down based on keywords, or see projects/room tours by categories like age.
• The Spruce – While this is a home-specific website, they have tons of room tours of nurseries.
• Style Me Pretty – In addition to all the wedding content, they have a section on nurseries.
• Inspired by This – A lovely design blog with gorgeous photos of nursery tours.
• Decorist

 

Look at Reviews on Vendor & Brand Websites

User-generated content (UGC) is everywhere these days, from social media sites to vendor/brand websites. Looking at the professional photographs on Buy, Buy, Baby are great and all, but what about seeing the product in an actual baby’s nursery without the fancy lighting? For any item you’re thinking of buying (or items that you may not love but are in the “theme” of your desired nursery), check out the reviews for photos to serve as inspiration.

My favorite websites to look at product review photos on are:

• Target. Almost every product on Target.com has a review or two, and lots of them have user-submitted photos. Browsing through items like crib sheets, wall decor, and have real-life photos using the products. It’s a great way to see what the product actually looks like and what other items/colors look nice with it. They also have an “inspiration” section with designer-curated themed nurseries.
• Etsy. Similar to what I said above, I love looking through the photos in the Etsy reviews of a shop. I’ve pinned so many of these photos to my nursery boards as inspiration for how to style a shelf, for example.
• Amazon. I’ve saved myself so much money from reading Amazon product reviews, specifically the photos! It can also be good for styling inspiration, too.
• Wayfair. Wayfair has a “Room Ideas” section hidden under their menu that lets you get inspiration of rooms using Wayfair products. They have a section for kid’s rooms that includes nurseries.