Decorating the space where you’ll bring home your little one for the first time is an exciting endeavour for a decor-loving parent. It’s here that you’ll feed, dress and rock them — and everything in-between. This room will be the first room of their lives, and it’s where you’re going to spend a lot of your life (for the next few years, at least).
Striking a comfortable balance between functionality and fun is the name of the nursery game. Looking ahead to 2025, these new nursery trends are helping to inform our aesthetic choices. They’ll help to lead us in a design direction that feels both fresh and timeless — for our tots and ourselves. Let’s take a look at what will soon be trending when it comes to nurseries, shall we?
1. Here Comes the Dark
White, beige and barely-there pastels have been the predominant palette of choice for nurseries for a number of years now. But looking ahead to 2025, darker hues are on the horizon — think deep browns, moody blues and dark rusts. Colour is coming to play, but its application is still soft and calming. Saturations are moving away from neon and pastels towards muted matte tones of blush, cafe au lait and mauve.
Along with these terrestrial tones comes a shift towards featuring the natural colour and grain of wood in the furnishings and accessories. A solid wood piece becomes the functional foundation for the room, anchoring the entire design. Darker walls, rich textures and character furnishings invite coziness and comfort. Goodbye, bright-white everything!
Related: Surprise! You Can Use Dark Colours in a Small Space — Here’s How
2. Grown Up Time
The “adultification” trend suggests that just because you’ve brought home a baby doesn’t mean you should immediately shun your own design sensibilities.
We can thank Millennials — and the value they place on personal style — for entering the top levels of consumer industries and parenthood simultaneously. Baby clothes look like tiny versions of our own wardrobes. Diaper bags mimic the shape and style of designer purses. And nurseries become natural extensions of our existing domestic aesthetic.
What’s in the nursery could be placed anywhere else in the house and it would look right at home — from contemporary art to an antique occasional chair. The only difference is the presence of a crib, such as this hip, sculptural one from Oeuf Canada. Oh, and a changing pad… which can be folded away or hidden when not in use, of course.
3. Theme Parked
Now, there still is something very sweet about a themed nursery and in 2025 we’ll still get to play around in this sentimental space — but pared back. Here, Designer Kelly Lynn Armstrong used a “subtle hint of circus” in her own Toronto home. The combo of a framed vintage circus etching, compact-yet-colourful mobile and tall giraffe toy showcases the trend beautifully. It gives a nod to a fun, childlike theme without going overboard with circus-animal crib sheets, rows of clown dolls or stripey circus tent murals.
Included in this trend is “elevated nostalgia” — revisiting favourite books, movies and characters from our own childhoods through tasteful decor items in the nursery. This is where we grown-ups get to play again, while still keeping a foot firmly in adulthood (and our mature tastes). Line art of R2-D2, an embroidered Hermione doll or a vintage Tintin print are all fun ways to give a wink to our pasts.
4. These Four Walls
While the nursery wallpaper accent wall has been an on-trend style staple for years, in 2025 it will roll out onto all four walls (as well as closets and ceilings). Huge advancements in wallpaper design and ease of application (and removal!) have made the challenges of covering the extra square footage well worth it. And thanks to the mass popularity of the aforementioned wallpaper wall, the catalogue of new prints, colours and themes available now is extensive.
The trend leans towards selecting a nursery wallpaper that seamlessly connects to the theme of the rest of the house, whether through palette or pattern. Either way, this type of immersive, visual storytelling is a delightful way to fill a new nursery with whimsy and wit.
The House That Jack Built Wallpaper by Boråstapeter, Finest Wallpaper, $225/roll.
5. Totally Morrisified
From these current nursery trends, it’s clear to see that designs are moving away from stark, minimalist perfection and towards playful, personalized maximalism. The robust reprinting of iconic Morris & Co. textiles everywhere also signals the resurgence of romantic nature motifs and devil-may-care layering of pattern, texture and colour.
DockATot even collaborated with this founding Arts and Crafts company on a comprehensive nursery collection. It features everything from nursing pillows to play tents — all in their fabulously busy flora-and-fauna prints. So, with all that in mind, looking towards 2025 there’s no doubt the future of nursery design is going to be a fun one!
DockATot x Morris & Co. Home Collection, DockATot, US $99-$399.
