How to Pick Paint Color for Your Child's Room or Nursery

Picking the paint color for your nursery is as important as everything you put in it! It either adds a pop of color or creates a backdrop for your design masterpiece. Whether it’s the softest shade of pink or the brightest shade of white, you never realize how many variations there are of one color until you are standing in front of the color bar at your local paint shop. All of a sudden, greys can look green, and brown’s can look pink—for the untrained eye, it can be very overwhelming!

We get asked all the time for color recommendations on paint to match our different bedding sets, so I thought I’d share with all of our lovely Project Nursery readers my top picks on the most popular paint colors for the nursery. These colors from Sherwin Williams are my tried-and-true, favorite picks—what you see is what you get! (But remember, colors read differently on computer monitors—so still take the time to see the color card in person!)

If you are having trouble visualizing the color on your walls, Sherwin Williams has the coolest interactive program on their website, where you can easily upload a picture of your room and drop in different color options to see what they might look like! Just for fun, try some crazy color combos—you just might like what you see!

TIP: Looking for a unique custom color? A lot of paint shops will digitize the perfect color match for you. Just bring in a fabric swatch or something with the shade you are looking for, and let their computers do the picking!

Happy painting everyone! And if you have a favorite color that you’d like to share with us, we’d love to hear about it!

http://hadesarrow.com/blog Meagan

Blue Baubble is actually very near the color I ended up painting OUR bedroom. I remember the color swatch when I was trying to settle on exactly the right shade (though, ironically, I can’t remember the name of exactly the right shade). It’s a lovely calm, beachy color. The only downside is that the entire family of colors looks a little bit like hospital scrubs.
http://projectnursery.com/ Pam

Fantastic tips Katy! I’ve tried to “wing” it with paint on more then one occasion and it never works out the way I envision. I always invest in a test patch and look at the paint on the wall in both day and night light. You are right, it can read so different from room to room with different light. Thanks
Dandelion

I really love these soft colors! Thanks for this color visualizer! I always have difficulty checking if two colors really match just by imagining it in my head.
Shai Virtuso

I love the color Jardin! my kids’ room is pretty much the same color. I would have loved to keep it that way, but as they are now bigger and have their own preferences, they want me to repaint it blue. That Blue Refrain one would have been nice, except I don’t think it really does fit fast-growing boys.
http://www.lullabypaints.com Nicole B

Great article Katy… I always use no VOC paint, when painting my child’s nursery,furniture, or crib… I love the colors…
http://www.etsy.com/shop/ModernWallDecal?ref=si_shop Babies momma

Cute nursery wall ideas!

http://www.etsy.com/shop/ModernWallDecal?ref=si_shop
ProudDad2B

Maybe am just color blind but I have been very lucky with color so far. Like the ones you have here, we opted for very mild colors and veered away from pink and blue. We didn’t want to know the sex of the baby and we wanted to be surprised, so we went for gender neutral. Great tips to know though, and I’d definitely be keeping these in mind for when I’m renovating the nursery 2 or 3 years from now :)
MapleSyrup

DIYers today have it good. For one they have tools like this that allows them to get the exact color that they want. I remember a time when we were very much limited to what colors are already sold. We can only mix paints and the colors are not exactly what you have in mind. Oops! Did I just give my age away???

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