Decorating your baby’s room is one of the most important things you can do while waiting for your little one to arrive. Not only will it give you hours of peaceful, quiet thoughts about your baby, it will also help your baby’s development once he or she arrives.

For boys, you can choose nautical, cars & trucks, sports, firefighter, etc.

For girls, themes like flower power, butterflies, dollhouses, angels, sunshine, tea party, etc. would be just perfect.

And if you don’t know yet the gender of your baby, but want to have it ready in time, you can always go with the themes that are universal: bugs and bees, animal farm, Noah’s Ark, Jungle Safari, Teddy Bears, popular characters (Curious George, Snoopy, Betty Boop, Dr. Seuss), Rain forest, and more.

Now, once you picked your theme, you need to get your items together to decorate the room. Start by painting the room, then look for a nice crib and locate a bedding set that matches your theme.

Create a focal point for the room: this can be either the crib or a display shelf, a wall mural, or a play area matching your theme. Your chosen focal point should really reinforce your theme.

You can also get some accessories for the nursery, and you should be all set.

Here are some resources for some of the different themes suggested above:

Decorating the Baby Nursery when you don’t know the Baby’s Gender – while it can be a challenge to decorate your new baby’s room when you have decided not to find out the gender of your baby during pregnancy, you have choices!