3 Tips for Designing a Nursery on a Budget

with Alexis Banks

From Alexis:

I had the pleasure of designing Katie and Jackson's nursery for little Beckley! At the time of designing the nursery I did not know if they were having a girl or boy, so I chose to stick with gender-friendly tones like blues, greens, tans, whites, and grays.

Here are a couple tips for designing a nursery on a budget:

1 | Pick What Is Most Important

The first thing is did was talk to Katie and Jackson to see what was top priority for them. They said they really wanted to get a crib, comfortable glider chair, area rug, wallpaper, paint, and accessories. So, I started with those items and made sure I included them.

2 | Look for Deals and Buy Used

Katie and Jackson had a smaller budget for their nursery, so I needed to shop deals. I got their area rug from Overstock.com because they have great rugs for cheap prices. I also found a wallpaper from Serena and Lily that they LOVED, and it was on sale! Usually Serena and Lily would be too expensive, but I waited for them to have a sale and ordered it then. (Note from Katie: Sorry guys, our wallpaper has since been discontinued! We literally bought the LAST 4 rolls available. BUT you can shop Serena and Lily Wallpapers HERE.)

We decided that doing wallpaper from floor to ceiling was going to be too expensive. So, instead of doing only wallpaper we added a chair rail and did wallpaper above it and paint below it. That was a great way to cut costs and still make the room look great. (Note from Katie: I'm SO GLAD we decided to do this! It still allowed us to have wallpaper on all walls of the room, but at HALF the cost. Winning idea!)

I also wanted to incorporate cute hardware for the closet doors, so I ordered knobs from Anthropologie. They have decent prices for door hardware if you are not doing a ton, and they add so much character to a space.

When it came to the crib and swivel chair, they found them on Facebook Marketplace from someone who was selling. Facebook Marketplace is a great place to look for furniture because it is usually cheap and in good shape.

3 | Add Accessories to Your Baby Registry

I knew they wanted to have accessories in their nursery like artwork, cute stuffed animals, and toys, but they did not have enough in the budget to get them right away. So, they decided to add those items to their baby registry. Instead of paying for accessories with your own money, add those items to the registry for others to buy, or simply save and purchase at a later date.