How to Create a Welcoming Baby Nursery on a Tight Budget

Create a welcoming sanctuary for your baby without breaking the budget with these creative budget nursery tips.

At first, we didn’t create a nursery for either of our babies.

For the first six months they slept in a cot in our room beside our bed.

Then they moved into the ‘spare room’ and we slowly cleared out the junk to make it their own sanctuary.

Every growth spurt was an incentive to declutter the next highest shelf.

Babies don’t need a decorated nursery to come home to, however, I get the nesting instinct to want to create one.

It’s nice to create a sweet sanctuary to welcome your little bundle of joy into the family – it’s part of the excitement and anticipation.

It’s also nice to have a calm and dedicated space for feeding and changing bub and helping them to sleep.

But…

It’s easy to go overboard.

With Pinterest, Instagram and some of the extreme parenting trends, you could spend an absolute packet on decorating a baby nursery and there’s pressure to conform to extreme standards.

But you can also make something super nice on a budget, and honestly, kids just love the cardboard box and non-Insta-worthy stuff anyway.

Baby Nursery on a Budget

Here’s how to transform that spare room into a baby nursery, without breaking the bank.

1. Clean Walls or Give Them a Lick of Paint

If it’s in the budget, a lick of paint can really bring a room back to life.

However, as someone who has painted a fair few bedrooms, it’s not as cheap as some people suggest. If you’re sanding, spot filling, undercoating, repainting the ceiling, adding wall paint, redoing the trim, it can add up to a few hundred dollars!

To bring the cost down, you can see if you can pick up off-tints at the hardware store or buy paint on sale.

Maybe you have friends or family with leftover paint they don’t want. Sometimes, you can even pick up leftover paint at the tip shop.

If painting is not in your budget, giving the walls a good scrub down can do wonders. It can be surprising how grotty walls can get.

1. Essential Furniture

The first step in creating a baby nursery is to decide on essential furniture.

Truly, the only essential furniture is a safe place for a baby to sleep. So if that’s all you’re starting out with, that’s all you need.

A cot is something that is worth buying new, up to the most modern safety standards.

Apart from that, some good to have items include:

• a comfy chair or rocking chair for feeding etc. (can be a chair from another room or one purchased second hand)
• a change table (I never had one myself – babies can’t roll off the floor, but for the sake of your back, you may prefer one).

For more information on baby essentials and how to save money, check out the article below.

2. Decorations

Decoration turns a baby nursery from stark to welcoming.

However, as the baby months are so fleeting, that cutsy wallpaper you like today, could be totally inappropriate for you independent pre-schooler. It pays to think ahead and choose a decoration scheme that is easy to change or will grow with your child.

While the all-beige trend is boring as…, it’s a good base for more colourful decorations that can change with time.

(Ask me how much my teen daughter loves the bright pink walls she insisted on as a pre-schooler…not much.)

Some decorating ideas that keep costs low include:

• Removable wall decals – great for rentals, but check first.
• Recycled canvas covered with decorative fabric. There were a bunch of old canvases in good nick in the tip shop. A clean and covered with a nice fabric will transform them and you can change the fabric as the child ages and their tastes change.
• Tea towels – my mum hung cute, animal print tea towels on the wall when I was a baby. 40 years later, and I still have some in use in my kitchen.
• Framed calendar pictures. I grabbed a bunch of cheap frames from the second-hand store and framed animal photos from an old calendar for my daughter’s room. Cute and educational as they get older.
• Posters. JB Hi-Fi gave away a bunch of old movie posters and we were lucky enough to snag some, so my son had Kung-Fu Panda in his room for a few years but even purchased posters are relatively inexpensive or cheap second hand. You can also pick up ‘educational’ posters at the Two-Dollar store.
• Hand-drawn illustrations. Do you draw? Or have a friend who can? You can even get AI to create pretty good illustrations these days. Frame the drawings in second-hand frames for inexpensive decoration.

When it comes to curtains or blinds, neutral coloured curtains will last many taste changes over the years.

Blackout curtains or blinds can be a boon when trying to help baby learn to sleep, but can work against you as they grow into toddlers who are not so comfortable with the dark.

Incidentally, we find open curtains and street lights make for an inexpensive night light!

3. Nursery Bedding

It is now recommended that the less bedding the better due to SIDS. Cot bumpers and matching blankets are super cute but are expensive and not safe. A simple sheet and swaddling wrap or sleeping bag are a good option.

You can make sheets from old larger sheets or pick up cot sheets fairly inexpensively in a discount store like Kmart.

Sleeping bags are common now (more common than when my kids were babies), but this is one area I’ve always gone for quality and bought the Gro-Bags online.

4. Storage

Besides a good second-hand chest of drawers for clothes, there are a few inexpensive storage items that can add decorative character to your nursery.

Keep an eye out for second hand versions to keep costs down.

Some ideas include:

• canvas storage boxes
• wicker baskets
• fabric storage baskets
• hanging nappy storage
• a small bookshelf or book basket

For baby books, we used a large rectangular basket that we picked up for $2 at the charity store.

At first, it sat on the floor next to the chair so it was easy for us to read to our bubs (yes, we read to them each night from birth).

Later, as toddlers, they could easily find their own books and tidy them away in the basket.

Think ahead when it comes to storage.

The large storage cubes, floating book rails, and wardrobes that you see on Pinterest are nice, but often not practical for children.

As baby grows older, they will need to be able to reach their toys, books and clothes on their own. Kid-friendly storage (like baskets) is not only cost effective, it gives them the independence they crave and need.

5. Personal Touches

When babies are first born, the don’t need toys or a highly stimulating environment. The shadows cast by the swaying branches outside their window can be captivating to a baby.

However, there are some common additions you might want to include:

• a ceiling fan (I live in the tropics, these are a must for us)
• a baby mobile to hang from the ceiling (obs, not near the fan)
• a mat (we would put down large baby blankets for tummy time, but a mat can look nice)
• a low-wattage lamp, great for night feeding and when you want to create a calming environment before bedtime. This will last well into the teen years when the kids read books in bed at night.

You can DIY a baby mobile for a fraction of the cost of a bought one, as long as all the parts are well secured and it’s well out of baby’s reach (that goes for DIY and store-bought). Even some colourful ribbons are a good first mobile

If you’re a quilter, or you have a quilter in the family, then homemade quilts make great wall hangings and floor mats that can become family heirlooms as ours is pictured above.

Tactile items sewn (very securely and used with supervision) onto the quilt can interest baby at tummy time. If you’re not a sewer, a quilt is the perfect place to start, because there are no complicated seams, zippers, darts…it’s just straight stitching all the way.

Have you seen rag rugs made from old t-shirts? They are a colourful way to add a floor rug to baby’s room without the expense.

Part of the excitement of having a baby is creating a space for them in your home as well as your heart. It can be easy to go overboard when creating a nursery for baby, but keeping it frugal will mean more money down the track for the things that really matter.

What to Read Next