Safari Nursery Ideas: One Simple Theme, and Everything It Could Become
Most safari nurseries, like most nurseries, start with something small. A colour you keep coming back to, a picture, a quilt someone gave you, a book you loved as a child. Any of those is a perfectly good place to begin.
Safari happens to be a lovely one, I think, because it can become almost anything. It can be soft and pale, leafy and warm, or full of beetles and birds and bold colour. Giraffes, elephants and lions often turn up in early board books, and they're not tied to a character or a film, which makes them a rather good backdrop for the start of your child's story.
The rooms below are one way that story might go: a calm nursery, then glimpses of what the same space could become at two and at four, with the main furniture staying throughout.
They're imagined rooms rather than real ones, so think of them less as a plan to follow and more as a sense of how far one small idea can travel.
Starting simply
Warm white walls, sage green on the cot bed and dresser, a neutral rug, a striped blackout blind and a chair comfortable enough for long feeds, stories and the middle of the night. One giraffe on a folded quilt, a wooden elephant on the side table, a soft toy giraffe waiting by the basket.
That's arguably all a safari nursery needs to be.
Most of the safari here is in the textures rather than the animals. The softness of the chair, the quilting on the blanket, the weave of the rug and baskets, pale wood and linen. Those are what make it feel like dry grass and warm afternoons, and they do it quietly enough that one giraffe is plenty.
The colours come from the savannah too: Sage Leaf, Savannah Beige, Soft Ochre, Natural Linen and Almond Cream.
None of them shouts, which is rather the point at three in the morning.
A room this quiet leaves plenty of space for whatever comes later.
What stays
If there are a few things you'd rather only buy once, it's worth giving them a little more thought: the cot bed, the dresser, the rug, perhaps the blind.
In calm colours such as sage, natural wood and warm neutrals, they sit happily in a very soft nursery and seem just as at home once the room gets louder.
The sage is worth noticing in particular. It appears in all three rooms, mainly through the furniture, and it's what makes each new palette feel like an evolution of the same space rather than a completely different one.
The bigger pieces stay, and the layers change around them.
What changes
Everything else can shift as often as you like.
Bedding, cushions, a canopy, pictures, wallpaper, whatever ends up on the shelf. Most of it can be changed without dismantling the whole room.
There's no need to plan several years ahead. It's simply useful to know that the room doesn't have to begin again every time your child changes.
At two
Once the cot bed is converted into a toddler bed, the room can begin to change around it.
Panelling along the lower half of the walls, painted to work with the sage furniture, is one way to make the room feel quite different without changing the things already in it.
Above that, much of the shift can come through textiles: a terracotta linen canopy, gingham and striped bedding, a little Deep Monstera green, warmer cushions and a few more books and toys.
The dresser, rug and blind needn't move at all.
The palette moves away from the dry grassland colours of the nursery towards something warmer and richer, and this is where the room starts to lean towards a jungle nursery. The colours here are Deep Monstera, Sage Leaf, Clay Rose, Terracotta and Warm Stone.
Terracotta against sage feels much more definite than the nursery palette without becoming loud. There's more colour and pattern now, but still plenty of quiet space around it.
This is also where the room can start to feel more playful. A large giraffe beside the bed, a favourite cushion, a basket of books. If books are beginning to take over, I have some more ideas for creating a small reading corner too.
The theme does not need to be everywhere to be understood.
At four
Same bed, same dresser, same rug.
This time the wall above the panelling can take more pattern. Perhaps wallpaper inspired by natural history, with drawn animals, birds, insects and other curious creatures.
The bedding can become bolder too. Calypso blue alongside ochre, stripes, deeper greens and a little black. A simple shelf can replace the nursery mirror and gradually fill with animals, books and small things gathered over time.
The colours become more unexpected: Beetle Green, Sage Leaf, Calypso, Curio Ochre and Museum Paper.
I must admit this is my favourite of the three, because it is the one that could only belong to one particular child.
A shelf like this is usually a sign that somebody has been collecting, arranging and very probably rearranging.
When the room becomes theirs
Perhaps the most interesting change is not the colour at all.
At six months, a room is mostly your taste. At two, you are beginning to guess at theirs, largely from what they reach for. By four, they are much more likely to tell you.
The room starts to belong to them through the animals on the shelf, the books they ask for every night, the toy that always ends up in bed, the drawing that suddenly deserves a frame.
The theme can stay put through all of it.
What changes is whose room it is.
Artwork over time
Artwork works particularly well in a room like this because it is one of the simplest things to change.
In the nursery, a pair of quiet frames may be all the wall needs. Later, they can be joined by something personal, a map, an old natural history image, another illustration or eventually something made at the kitchen table.
I like rooms where pictures accumulate rather than arriving as a perfectly matching finished set.
Repeating one thing can be enough to hold a mixture together. Perhaps the same oak frames, or a colour that appears in several pieces. One painted frame picking up the terracotta or Curio Ochre can add a little contrast without making the whole wall feel planned.
A picture ledge is useful too, particularly once the collection begins to grow, because things can be swapped and rearranged without deciding that anything has found its permanent home.
For the calmest version, I'd probably use the Safari Animal Alphabet, with perhaps a personalised name print alongside it.
In the warmer toddler room, the Rainforest Alphabet sits naturally with the deeper greens, terracotta and playful textiles.
By the time the room has become Curious Jungle, something more detailed such as the Insect Alphabet or a personalised rainforest print can sit alongside books, natural history images and the things your child begins to collect.
The artwork doesn't have to do all the work. It simply needs to belong to the world you're creating.
If you're starting from scratch
If I were starting from scratch, I'd probably begin with the bigger pieces, the cot bed, dresser and rug, in colours I'd be happy to live with for a few years.
Then one or two things that make the safari idea clear, a print perhaps, a favourite animal, a patterned blind or a quilt. I'd leave the bedding, books, cushions and artwork to carry the colour and character that's likely to change.
There's no need to decide what the room will look like at four before your baby has even arrived. A feeling, a few colours, some thought about the pieces you hope to keep, and plenty of room for the child who's going to live there is probably enough.
You don't need everything to match.
A few pieces carrying the theme is plenty.
All my safari and jungle prints are here, if you'd like to see them in these colours.
