It might sound a little crazy after peeling five different wallpapers from this house, but we’re actually considering wallpaper again—this time in the nursery. I even mentioned the idea briefly in my post about the nursery mobile.
When we first imagined the custom built-ins, we pictured an accent treatment between them—maybe a paint color, a patterned paper, or even a planked feature wall. After finishing the built-ins we hesitated because they already carry a lot of visual weight, and we didn’t want the space above the crib to feel cluttered. Still, neither of us could shake the idea of adding a subtle accent somewhere in the room. While browsing wallpaper options for the showhouse, John found a pattern on Spoonflower that grabbed his attention.
He secretly ordered samples of that pattern and its darker version without checking with me first—$5 per sample, and with tax and shipping it came to $13. That small purchase could earn him a grin or a glare. The glare came first—not because of the $13, but because I still remember the clawed hands from stripping old wallpaper. The sticker price was worth it, though, since Spoonflower’s removable wallpaper eased my fears. I also liked the print itself; it felt like something that could grow with the baby rather than feeling overly juvenile.
The samples arrived a couple of weeks later and were bigger than I expected. They revealed a subtle linen-like texture in the gray tones that wasn’t obvious online, which felt like a lovely, tactile detail for a nursery accent wall.
We taped the samples to different walls to see how they felt in the room. John went rogue again and tried one on the bike-art wall. Since we’d already decided not to mess with the built-in wall, he thought the bike wall might be a better candidate for an accent. Forgive the terrible phone photo, but it helped us envision the scale in context.
I brought that photo into Photoshop to mock up a full-wall version. I overlaid the sample photo onto a wider shot of the wall, adjusted the scale until the patterns matched, and then tiled the wallpaper rectangle to fill the image. After restoring full opacity, I carefully erased the wallpaper in front of frames, doors, and furniture so the pattern appeared to sit behind those elements—helping the mock-up look more realistic.
We also tried the darker sample and several other color options, but both of us preferred the lighter gray version. To be certain it would pair well with the rest of the room, I placed the wallpaper mock-up next to the plain wall in another photo. The colors aren’t perfect in the edited image—the curtains, for instance, read a little neon—but it helped us confirm the lighter pattern wouldn’t clash.
We tested the wallpaper idea on the crib wall too, just to compare with our original plan. Ultimately, the bike-art wall felt like the better option: the crib wall seemed more crowded with the built-ins, the mobile, and patterned crib skirt. We also experimented with a bold green, and a charcoal tone to see how a solid color might read—green felt flat in the mock-up, while charcoal offered a cozy contrast to the white crib and mobile.
We also received a thoughtful mock-up from a reader, Annie, who suggested painting chunky stripes behind the crib. We love a striped wall, so that option gave us pause and added to the shortlist of possibilities.
Right now we’re letting the ideas simmer. The removable wallpaper feels like a low-risk way to introduce texture and pattern, but we still want the nursery to be a balance of playful and cozy—not chaotic. Would you wallpaper the bike-art wall, paint a solid green or charcoal accent, try stripes, or leave the room as-is? We’d love to know what you think about adding a subtle, removable accent to a nursery filled with neutral elements.
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