The nursery series / 02
Kids' room wallpaper ideas by age
Match the wall to the stage. For a nursery (0 to 2), choose quiet, low-contrast repeats like clouds, bunnies or rainbows. For toddlers and preschoolers (2 to 5), choose animals, dinosaurs, cars and letters they can point at and name. For big kids (6 and up), try stars, planets or a black-and-white map made to be colored in. Designs like Clouds, Stars and Alphabet carry across stages. Order a $15 sample before you commit.
1. Nursery, 0 to 2: keep it quiet.
A nursery wall is mostly background. It is what you look at during night feeds and what a baby sees while falling asleep, so the best choices are soft palettes and small, even repeats that read as texture from across the room rather than as a busy picture.
Our Quiet Nursery collection is built around that idea:
- Clouds and Neutral Nursery Cloud for a room that feels larger and calmer.
- Bunny nursery and Moon and bunny nursery for a storybook feel without strong color.
- Neutral rainbow and Teddy Bear Striped in warm beiges that sit easily next to wood furniture.
- Woodland nursery and Scandinavian floral nursery for a little more pattern, still on a gentle ground.
One accent wall behind the crib is usually enough. If the room is small, a pale ground like Clouds keeps it from closing in. Our accent wall guide has panel counts for common walls, and the gender-neutral guide sorts these designs by palette.
2. Toddler and preschool, 2 to 5: something to name.
Somewhere around two, the wall becomes something to talk about. Children this age like pointing at a giraffe, counting the cars or finding the letter that starts their name. Designs with clear, recognizable motifs earn their place here.
The Little Explorers collection is for this stage: Multicolor safari animals, Pastel seamless dinosaur, Ocean life, Toy car, and two letter designs, Alphabet and Animal alphabet. Our safari and animal nursery wallpaper page puts the animal designs side by side.
Try a lower-wall treatment
Toddler rooms work hard, and a full wall of bright animals can be a lot. Another option is to paper only the lower part of the wall, below a chair rail or a painted line, and leave the top plain. Our shortest panels are 48 inches tall, which cover a lower wall up to 44 inches once the 4-inch trim allowance is included. It puts the pattern at a toddler’s eye level and uses less material.
Moving on from a nursery you already finished? The toddler room refresh guide covers updating the room without starting over.
3. Big kid, 6 and up: let them choose.
By school age, kids have opinions, and a room they helped design is a room they are more likely to want to spend time in. The trick is to give a real choice inside a shortlist you are happy with.
The Big-Kid Universe collection leans toward space, maps and letters that still work when the nursery becomes a homework corner: Stars, Watercolor solar system, Alphabet and Fairytale map paintable.
- Pick two or three designs you would be glad to live with.
- Order a $15 sample of each and tape them up side by side.
- Let your child make the final call after a few days.
4. The interactive pick: a map to color in.
The Fairytale map paintable design is a black-and-white fairytale map made to be colored in by little artists. It turns a wall into a long project rather than a finished picture: a castle colored in one weekend, a forest the next.
- Test the coloring tools on a sample first. We have not tested specific markers, crayons or paints on the panels, so try the ones you plan to use on a sample and see how they look and dry before anyone starts on the wall.
- Coloring is a permanent change. Once a section is colored, it stays colored. That is the point, but decide together which areas are open for coloring.
- Consider a lower wall. Papering the reachable lower part of the wall keeps the coloring where small arms can reach it.
5. Designs that carry across stages.
Some designs appear in more than one of our kids’ collections because they work at more than one age. If you would rather not redo the wall at every stage, start here:
| Design | Works from | Why it lasts |
|---|---|---|
| Clouds | Nursery to big kid | A soft repeat that reads as calm at one and as sky at eight. |
| Alphabet | Toddler to big kid | Letters to learn, then letters to spell with. |
| Toy car | Toddler to big kid | A small, cheerful motif that does not feel babyish. |
| Pastel seamless dinosaur | Toddler to big kid | Dinosaurs rarely go out of favor. |
| Dandelion flower | Nursery to big kid | A light botanical that suits a teen room too. |
When a stage does end, peel-and-stick means no paste to scrape. How cleanly a panel comes off depends on the wall, the paint and the material, and we have not yet completed our own removal tests. Read the removal guide before you plan around it.
6. Plan the wall.
Every kids’ design comes in 30-inch-wide panels in nine heights, priced $90 to $180 per panel. Measure the wall at its widest and tallest, and the nursery wallpaper calculator will count the panels and pick the height. Our nursery wallpaper guide covers measuring, panel heights and timing in more detail.
See them all in one place. Browse every kids’ design, grouped by stage.