Don’t let the joy of decorating your baby’s room be tempered by the overwhelming number of choices you face. When you start by choosing the perfect color scheme, the rest will be easier and more fun. Selecting just the right colors depends on personal preferences, but the Creative Baby Nursery Rooms website suggests that if you go with more than one color, keep them in the same family; that is, all bright colors, all pastels or all muted.

Baby Blues and Purples

Blue as a main color for a baby’s nursery is suitable because it encourages relaxation and induces sleep, recommends the “Natural Home Magazine” website. They suggest that although purple is a reassuring color, it may also provide too much stimulation in a baby’s room. Lavender is a workable solution, because it can also prove soothing. Lavender might be the right choice if you don’t want to go with blue for a little girl’s room.

Special Objects

Sometimes the colors for your baby’s nursery might be right in front of you, waiting to be noticed. In their book, “Baby’s Room: Ideas and Projects for Nurseries,” Jessica Strand and Jennifer Levy suggest starting from one object and using that to build your room around. For example, if you have a comfortable chair or rocker, start your color scheme from the upholstery. You might have a family hand-me-down quilt that you plan to hang on the wall. The colors in that quilt might provide you with an instant color scheme.

Primary Colors

Red, yellow and blue, the primary colors, can create a kindergarten-like feel for a baby’s room, and since so many toys and other baby items are manufactured in these bright colors that babies gravitate to, they may seem like the perfect choice. Parenting Toddlers suggests toning these down with white or other neutrals to keep the room from seeming overwhelmed with colors. For example, you might want to paint one wall of the room white with circus-striped primary colors to set the color scheme and leave the other walls white.

Not-Too-Bright Yellow

Because the color yellow seems joyful, you may be tempted as it may be to paint a baby’s room a bright sunny yellow. However, Home Decorating Room-by-Room cautions that bright sun yellow can be over-stimulating to babies. You’ll want to stick to a pastel shade of yellow, perhaps adding fabric accents of a brighter yellow, a little orange and some greens.