Pastel colors are among the most popular choices for nurseries, and are said to encourage serenity and rest. While children love bright primary colors, experts advise to use a calm color scheme for a newborn baby.
Cool colors such as blue bring a sense of calm. Feng shui practitioners believe in the 'bright principle' where colors such as bright reds and blues are believed to be a better choice for a playroom than nursery because they stimulate. One way to meet the challenge of decorating a nursery is to use predominantly cool colors, and then introduce a few bright primary colors in toys and accessories; gradually adding more as your baby grows.
If you want to create a non-gender specific room, consider using green. If you want to design a gender specific room with pink for girls and blue for boys, consider using light or medium shades of these colors, and then accenting the room in bright primary colors.
The following is a list of colors and their associations.
- Red: Intense emotion, energy and strength.
- Pink: Femininity, caring, love and friendship.
- Yellow: Joy, happiness and energy. NOTE: studies have shown that babies cry more often in yellow rooms.
- Orange: Combining the energy of red and happiness of yellow, this color is associated with joy, creativity, sunshine, and the tropics.
- Green: The color of nature, green symbolizes growth and harmony and has a strong emotional correspondence to safety, healing and stability. It is the most restful color to the human eye. In feng shui, green is balancing and refreshing.
- Blue: Calming, healing, tranquil, and understanding.
- Purple: The favorite color for almost 75 percent of children. Purple combines the stability of blue and the energy of red. It is associated with royalty, independence, power, creativity and mystery.
- White: Cool, clean, light and innocence.
- Monochromatic: Uses variations in lightness and saturation of a single color, producing a soothing effect. This is very easy on the eyes, especially when blue or green hues are used. Neutral colors can easily be integrated into this color scheme.
- Analogous: Uses colors that are adjacent to each other on the color wheel, such as blue, lavender and turquoise. One color is used as a dominant color while other colors are used to enrich the scheme. Avoid combining warm and cool colors.
- Complementary: Creates high contrast because it consists of two colors that are opposite each other on the color wheel. Choose a dominant color, and use its complementary color for accents.