Nursery wall art is one of the first decorating decisions you'll make for your baby, and it's worth doing properly. After ten years of printing and framing nursery pieces at our West Gosford facilities, and sending them to more than 350,000 homes across Australia and beyond, we can tell you exactly what separates the art a child grows up with from the art that gets replaced within a year: archival materials, the right size for your wall, and colours chosen for your room's real light. This guide walks you through all three, and gently explains why parents who compare their options end up ordering from us.
We say that last bit plainly because it's true and easy to prove. Every nursery print we sell is produced on 230gsm archival fine art paper with pigment inks that won't fade through a childhood of morning sun, framed in solid timber, and sent out within 24 hours on standard sizes. No marketplace reseller drop-shipping posters from overseas can match that, and the difference shows on the wall within a year. If you want art that still looks beautiful when your baby starts school, you're in exactly the right place.
Vintage Jungle In Green Art Print · Vintage Jungle in Soft Sage Art Print · Vintage Jungle In Sahara Art Print
What Makes Nursery Art Worth Buying
The nursery art world splits into two very different tiers, and the split is completely invisible in product photos, which is why so many first-time parents get caught out. The first tier is thin poster stock in plastic frames: cheap to buy, quick to yellow, corners lifting by the second summer. The second tier, where we sit, is proper archival fine art printing: 230gsm cotton-feel paper, pigment inks rated for decades, and solid oak, black or white timber frames made to order. In a nursery, that difference isn't just cosmetic. This is a room that gets morning light, afternoon heat and a humidifier through winter, and art that lives there for years has to be built to handle all of it without going tired on you.
Because we're the ones printing and framing, rather than reselling someone else's stock, every piece in our nursery wall art collection is made when you order, in the size your wall actually needs, from A5 right up to statement sizes. That includes custom dimensions when the space between the cot and the ceiling asks for something in-between, which is a service resellers simply can't offer you. If your wall isn't a standard size, we'll happily make the art that is.
A nursery is the most photographed room in the house for two years. The art in those photos should still be on the wall, unfaded, when your child starts school.
Choosing a Style That Actually Works Above a Cot
Nursery art works best when it does two things at once: it feels calming from the doorway, and it holds attention up close. The styles our customers reorder for their second children tell the real story of what lasts. Soft animal illustrations are still the most-ordered category, closely followed by muted botanical prints, gentle coastal scenes for the beach-adjacent families, and understated alphabet or name prints. On the colour side, the loveliest Australian nurseries right now sit in warm neutrals, sage, dusty pink and soft blue, all palettes that carry beautifully from newborn through to big-kid room without a repaint in sight.
- Animal prints: the enduring favourite, and for a lovely developmental reason. Babies track high-contrast shapes and faces very early on, so a pair of framed animal illustrations either side of the change table genuinely earns its keep in attention held.
- Botanicals and landscapes: for parents building a calm-first room. They graduate beautifully as your child grows, and they never look babyish.
- Name and word art: personal and lovely, as long as you choose designs where the typography is the whole point, rather than an afterthought sat on top of a background.
- Sets and pairs: nurseries suit pairs and trios beautifully, because the wall is usually broken up by the cot, the drawers and a window. Our 3-piece art sets are composed to read as one lovely thought across a wall, not three separate ideas competing.
Vintage Jungle In Mist Art Print · Hop to the Top Height Chart Decal
Sizing and Hanging in a Nursery, With Real Numbers
Sizing a nursery follows the same friendly rules as the rest of the house, with one very important safety adjustment. Above the cot, art needs to be firmly fixed and, ideally, positioned to the side rather than directly over the sleeping zone. Our production team are parents too, and that's the advice we give every customer who asks. Above a change table or a feeder chair, hang the piece so its centre sits at seated eye-line, roughly 130 to 140 cm from the floor. On open walls, remember that your child experiences the room from much lower eye-lines than you do, so hanging at 120 to 130 cm centre reads correctly for the person actually living in the room.
For scale: above a standard 132 cm cot, a single 50 x 70 cm framed print, or a pair of A3-scale prints spanning 60 to 75 percent of the cot width, sits just right. A feature wall behind the cot takes a 70 x 100 cm piece comfortably. And if you're caught between two sizes, we'll happily settle it for you. Send a photo of the nursery wall with its measurements, and our team will mock your shortlisted artworks onto your actual wall, to scale, for free, usually within a business day. You get to see the art in your nursery before you spend a dollar, which is exactly the sort of certainty a first-time parent deserves. Our hanging guide covers fixings in detail, and if you're renting, there are removable hanging options that leave your walls completely mark-free.
The Materials Question Worth Asking Every Seller
Before you buy nursery art from anyone, ask three simple questions. What paper weight and ink type do you print with? Where is it framed, and in what? And how quickly does it ship? Here are our answers, plainly: 230gsm archival fine art paper with fade-resistant pigment inks; solid timber frames in oak, white or black, assembled at our two West Gosford facilities on the NSW Central Coast; and 24-hour dispatch on standard framed sizes, because a nursery deadline is a real deadline. Resellers generally can't answer the first two questions at all, because they've never seen the products they sell. We walk past ours on the production floor every day of the week.
Because our smallest sizes print on the same paper with the same inks as the largest, an A5 or A4 print from $9.95 is a genuine material sample of the piece you're considering. Order one, hold it against the nursery's paint in morning and evening light, then order the wall-size version with complete confidence. Between that little sample, the free digital mockup, and our 30-day exchange policy on standard sizes, there's really no reason left to gamble on nursery art from a stock-photo reseller you'll never hear from again.
Llama on Blue II Art Print · Llama on Blue I Art Print · Cozy Koala Art Print
Where to Hang What in the Nursery
- Behind or beside the cot: your feature moment. One statement piece, or a composed pair, firmly fixed and positioned to the side of the direct sleep zone rather than straight over the baby.
- Above the change table: the most-viewed art in the room, by you, at 3am and again at 3pm. Choose something you genuinely love, because you'll be looking at it more than anyone.
- The feeding corner: calm rather than stimulating. A muted landscape or a soft botanical from the eucalyptus collection is beautifully suited to the quietest corner of the house.
- The wardrobe wall: where word art and personalised prints belong, hung at child eye-line so they can grow into them.
- Paired with wallpaper: a feature wall from our nursery wallpaper collection with coordinated framed art on the adjacent wall is the most-photographed combination our customers share with us, and because both come off the same production floor, the palettes actually match rather than nearly match.
Why Parents Choose Olive et Oriel, Specifically
We'll be direct about this, because the comparison really is the whole buying decision. Marketplace nursery art is printed who-knows-where on unknown stock and arrives in three weeks if you're lucky. Chain-store nursery art is mass-produced in fixed sizes with no relationship to your actual wall. We're the manufacturer: Australian-made to order, custom sizing to your exact wall, archival materials as standard rather than as an upsell, 24-hour dispatch on standard framed sizes, delivery Australia-wide and international shipping to over 40 countries, free digital styling so you see the art in the room before you buy, and a 30-day exchange policy on standard sizes if what arrives isn't quite right. Since 2015, that combination has furnished over 350,000 homes. For a room this important, buy once, buy properly, and buy from the people who actually make it.
For the wallpaper side of the nursery, our boys' room wallpaper guide and girls' bedroom wallpaper showcase carry the same thinking through the whole scheme, and the complete sizing guide covers every measurement rule mentioned here in more depth.
The Quiet Psychology of the Nursery Wall
There's a reason the nursery is the room parents decorate first and photograph most: it's identity work, in the most honest sense of the phrase. The room announces the family you're becoming. Research on how we buy for our homes has shown for years that we decorate for the people we're becoming, not the people we already are, and nowhere is that truer or more understandable than in a room prepared for someone who hasn't arrived yet. So build the room that matches the parenthood you intend: calm, considered, made of things that will still be beautiful in a decade. That isn't sentimentality, it's the very practical logic of choosing archival materials for a room whose photographs will be looked at for the next fifty years.
It also explains something we notice on the production floor every week. Nursery orders often arrive in clusters: the art, the wallpaper and a decal set, ordered together and composed as one scheme. You're not really buying objects, you're gently assembling a whole little world. Our job is making sure every element of that world comes off the same floor, in the same palette, at the same standard, and arrives well within the weeks of pregnancy you have left to hang it. Several parents have told us the quiet stretch of time between placing the order and hanging the pieces became part of the nesting itself, and we think that's rather lovely.
A Simple Order of Operations for Your Nursery
- Paint first, art second, but only if you're actually repainting: otherwise, choose the art first and let its palette guide your accents. Art is much harder to compromise on than cushions are.
- One hero, two supports: a statement piece beside the cot, a calm print in the feeding corner, and one personal piece at the change table. Three artworks is a beautifully composed nursery. Seven starts to feel like a gallery corridor for someone 60 cm tall.
- Check the light across a whole day: nurseries typically catch bright morning sun. Hold the $9.95 A5 sample print against your wall at 7am and again at 7pm before committing to the palette.
- Order about six weeks out: not because we need that long, standard framed sizes ship in 24 hours, but because hanging art is a stepladder job that's much better done well before the third trimester makes stepladders a lively debate at home.
When your nursery is finished, please send us the photo. The customer nurseries in our inbox are the loveliest brief we've ever had, and several designs in the current nursery wallpaper range began as patterns parents quietly asked us to create for them.
From Nursery to Big-Kid Room, Without Starting Over
The most rewarding nursery schemes are the ones designed with their own future built in. If you choose art with subjects that outgrow the baby years gracefully, animals, landscapes, botanicals, the room can update itself later with bedding and a new cushion rather than a full repaint. Customers who planned this way tell us the nursery-to-big-kid transition cost them one new print from the kids range and one relaxed afternoon, while the archival pieces from the original scheme carried straight through unchanged. That's the quiet economics of buying quality first: the cheap poster gets bought twice, and the archival print gets bought once and simply moves up the wall as the cot becomes a bed. Our sizing guide covers the new hanging heights when that day arrives, which it will, sooner than you think.
Frequently Asked Questions
What wall art is best for a nursery?
Soft, high-contrast illustrations and calm botanical or coastal scenes, printed in archival quality, tend to work best. They're engaging for the baby up close, calming from the doorway, and durable enough to survive years of direct morning light. Look for 230gsm archival paper, pigment inks and solid timber frames, so the art lasts the whole childhood rather than just the first year.
Is it safe to hang framed art above a cot?
The safest choice is to hang art beside or offset from the direct sleeping zone rather than straight overhead, and always into a stud or with wall anchors rated well above the frame's weight. Our framed prints arrive with hanging hardware already fitted, and the layout we quietly recommend for every nursery is to put the statement piece on the wall beside the cot, not above it.
What size art should I choose for a nursery wall?
Above a standard cot, aim to span 60 to 75 percent of the cot's width: a 50 x 70 cm print, or a pair of A3 prints, sits beautifully. A feature wall takes 70 x 100 cm comfortably. Send us a photo of your wall with its measurements and we'll mock your shortlisted pieces onto it at true scale, for free, so you can see the size in your actual nursery before you order anything.
Can I see the art in my nursery before I buy?
Yes, and we'd love to do it for you. Our free digital styling service mocks your shortlisted artworks onto a photo of your actual wall at accurate scale, usually within one business day. Combined with the product page's print-resolution zoom and an A5 or A4 print from $9.95 as a genuine material sample, you can check the colour, the detail and the scale before you commit to the full-size piece.
How quickly does nursery art ship?
Standard framed sizes are dispatched within 24 hours from our Central Coast NSW facilities, with delivery Australia-wide and international shipping to over 40 countries. Custom sizes are made to order on a short production run. Nursery deadlines are real deadlines, and our 24-hour dispatch exists for exactly that reason.
What if the art doesn't suit the room when it arrives?
Standard-size artworks are covered by our 30-day exchange policy for store credit or exchange, with return shipping at the customer's cost. In practice, the free mockup and the $9.95 sample print make exchanges genuinely rare, because you've already seen the art on your wall and held the paper in your hands before the full-size order goes to print.
Will the prints fade in sunlight?
Our pigment inks on 230gsm archival paper are fade-resistant and built for decades of normal room light, including the bright morning sun most nurseries receive. All that said, any printed material will eventually age under direct harsh sunlight, so across a whole childhood, a wall that isn't in all-day direct sun keeps the art looking gallery-fresh the longest.
Do you sell matching nursery wallpaper and art?
Yes, and because both are printed at the same West Gosford facilities, the palettes genuinely coordinate rather than nearly coordinate. The combination our customers photograph most is a wallpaper feature wall behind the cot with framed art on the adjacent wall, drawn from the same colour family so the whole room hangs together beautifully.
Start your shortlist in the nursery wall art collection, add a feature wall from nursery wallpaper, or send us a photo of your wall and let our team style it for you, for free. Whichever way you begin, you'll be making a room your family will photograph for years.
