Nautical nurseries can come in so many shapes and styles. You can create a cutesy under-the sea-theme, or make something vintage that looks like it came from a Jules Verne novel. You can even make it feel like the entire room is a boat or seashore. No matter what style you prefer, we found Nautical Nursery Ideas that are perfect for a little boy or girl.
1) Bubbles
Since nautical nurseries are all about what happens on the water, you can make a nautical nursery look like it’s underwater. For an underwater shipwreck theme, you can get bubble garlands like this that’ll make it seem like real, three-dimensional bubbles are floating around. The garlands are flat, but look three-dimensional and realistic. Try putting these against green or blue walls for the best effect, then add ship and fish decals, along with shipwreck-themed decorations.
2) DIY Fish Tank As Decoration
A nautical theme will often include some amount of ocean wildlife and plant life, so if you want your baby to have more exposure to nature and begin to learn about it, you can use these ideas to set up a small fish tank as a decoration. You don’t have to add real fish but can instead add real or fake plants to make it seem like a real aquarium. While a bigger tank is better for real fish, you can do this with a very small tank as a table or even shelf decoration.
3) DIY Nautical Rope Name Sign
Many parents like to have their child’s name on the wall, so if you’re interested in that, you’ll want a way to do so that fits a nautical theme. We found this video tutorial from Caden Lane that you can use to make a wooden sign with your baby’s name written in cursive with a rope. This creates a nautical look since ropes are so common on ships, particularly vintage sailing ships. This name sign is also an excellent way to make the room feel like your little one’s own space.
4) Rope Mirror
Ropes are a standard nautical symbol since it’s used on ships and sailboats used to have rigging held together by rope and wood. That makes rope a good way to decorate a nautical nursery, so we found a small mirror with a triple layer of rope wrapped around it on Amazon. The round shape brings port holes to mind, too. Mirrors are a nice thing to have in a nursery since they bring in natural light, illuminating the space in a healthier and more natural way during the day without affecting the amount of light at night.
5) Sea Creatures
Babies and young children love animals, so you might want to find a way to incorporate animals into this nautical theme. That means adding sea creatures that would naturally be in nautical settings, whether it’s real animals like the ones in this set of stickers or mythical creatures like mermaids. Try using removable stickers like these so that you can get rid of them when you no longer have a nursery and your child’s too old for them.
6) One Green, One Blue
Green and blue are probably the two best colors for creating a nautical theme because those are the two colors that the ocean most often appears to be. While the sea is generally thought of as blue, there are many times when the waves appear green, so you can combine the two colors by painting one wall blue and one green. This makes a more interesting look than solid blue or green walls, though you can certainly use either color exclusively, too.
7) Shell Lights
Shells are something that’s fascinated people for a long time. If flowers are the most common natural decoration on land, seashells are probably the most common one on the sea. People collect these beautiful objects for a reason, so it only makes sense to get seashell decorations for a nautical room. You can get something like these shell and turtle string lights from Amazon to provide soft illumination in place of a night light. The neat thing about these is that they’ll still look pretty during the day since they’re shaped like shells and turtles.
8) DIY Nautical Letters
Spelling your child’s name on the wall is a common nursery practice, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do it in a unique way. In this Life with Rogina video, you can see how you can paint wooden letters to make them look like something nautical. You can create lighthouses and add all kinds of shells, ship wheels, and any other flat nautical-themed wood pieces you can find. Don’t be afraid to use the shape of the letters in your baby’s name and make them resemble things of similar shapes. For example, an L could look like a lighthouse.
9) DIY Signal Flag Art
Most people probably aren’t going to include signal flags in their nursery, making them a unique decoration. You can use the information in this article to make signal flag art, and maybe try to create some art from other nautical flags. If you want something cuter for the nursery, you can try pirate flags and other nautical flags that are less serious than the ones in this tutorial. These signal flags will be fascinating as your child grows old enough to read them.
10) Nursery Ship
If you want the entire nursery to feel like one ship, you can get decorations like these porthole stickers that look like portholes with sea creatures on the other side. These stickers are easy to use peel and stick pieces, though you’ll want to make sure they’re flat before you stick them to the wall for the best effect. When you’re no longer using this room as a nursery, you can remove the portholes using a hairdryer.
11) DIY Compass Stencil
Compasses are standard seafaring decorations because people needed them for navigating at sea. After all, there weren’t many nautical landmarks, so they needed to utilize maps and navigational tools even more so than land explorers did. You can make the walls feel like a map to an exotic place by adding a compass rose using this stencil. Try painting an entire pirate map with an X to mark the spot, or just use the stencil to put a compass rose on a tan or blue background!
12) DIY Oar With Letters Hanging
Putting your child’s name up on the wall in big letters is a wonderful way to make the nursery feel like their space since you can’t fill it with their favorite toys yet. Until you know their preferences, you can label this as their space by writing their name on the wall in a thematic way. Try using this tutorial to make a decoration with the letters of their name hanging from an oar. The pattern creates a nice nautical look, but you can change the colors and pattern to anything you like.
13) Fish Net Decoration
Since one of the more popular reasons for sailing is to go fishing, a fishing net is a logical decoration for a nautical room. You can get netting like this and hang it from the ceiling so that it drapes across one wall, drape it over a table, or attach pieces of it to different furniture and other decorations Try using it as a template to spray paint a net pattern on a decoration or piece of furniture, then let us know how it goes!
14) DIY Anchor Stencil
Anchors are a good choice for nautical symbolism since every ship has one. You can get a stencil like this one from Amazon and use it to paint the walls, furniture, or art pieces with an anchor. The nice thing about a stencil is that it has more detail than most people could draw on a hand-drawn anchor, giving it a more put-together look than something freehand would usually have. Stencils also create solid lines that are easier for infants to see as their eyesight develops.
15) Blue Bows
Bows are common in sailor outfits, so blue bows are a good way to represent them in a nautical nursery. You can do cute things like tying bows around crib rails, as this family did, or look for other ways to include them in decorations. Try getting watercolor paintings of blue bows, tying a bow around the top of a mobile, or finding crib sheets and changing pad covers with pictures of blue bows on them. This works better in a boy’s nursery.
16) Nautical Night Light
Night lights are helpful in nurseries because they make it much easier to look in on your child without having to turn on bright overhead lights at night. This makes it easier for both you can your infant to return to a restful sleep afterward, so we wanted to find a nautical night light for you. This one from Amazon has a compass rose, sea turtle, coral, and a shell, and the light itself is blue, making it look like an undersea picture with some mapmaking elements.
17) DIY Rocking Boat Craft
This craft is a wonderful thing to make with any older children you have since it allows them to be a part of your preparations for the newest addition to the family. You can use this video tutorial to learn how to make a rocking boat craft on your own or with other children. Then, you can place the craft on a shelf as a decoration or the baby can play with it since it rocks back and forth.
18) DIY Lighthouse Stencil
Lighthouses are essential to nautical navigation since they keep ships from crashing against dangerous rocks when they’re close to shore. They’re cool nautical decorations and a lot of adults and children alike love them. If you’re a fan of these unique structures, you can get a stencil like this and use it to paint lighthouses on the walls and furniture. You can even use it to paint a lighthouse on paper, frame it, and hang it as wall art.
19) Submarine Stickers
Submarines are one part of the nautical seascape that many people neglect to include in a nursery, but a lot of people think they’re cool. That makes them a unique and fun thing to include since not everybody thinks of it, so we found a way for you to add some submarines to your baby’s room. This sticker set has a submarine, and since little kids and babies love animals, we found one with a polar bear driving the submarine!
20) DIY Nautical Mobile
Mobiles are important in nurseries since they give the infant something to look at and entertain them on the changing table, and also help lull them to sleep by dangling above the crib. If you’re looking for a mobile to match your theme, this homemade one shouldn’t be too difficult to make. Just use the instructions here to put together an interesting nautical mobile. You can swap out any decorations you want to with different nautical pieces since you’re making it yourself.
21) Underwater Floor Decal
This underwater scene is amazing, and it’ll definitely up your nautical decorating game. This sticker, unlike most, is designed to go on the floor, where it’ll look like a portal into another world. This sticker looks like a hole in the floor that leads to schools of fish and other undersea wonders. This makes it an amazing way to promote a sense of wonder and existential intelligence for your little one as he or she grows older gazing at the ocean scenery.
Are we missing any amazing nautical ideas that you’d like to share? We love hearing more about different nurseries, and can’t wait to hear your ideas in the comments below.
