Sweet Dreams

Bright colors are a delight in
the nursery.

Hip Colors

This showhouse children's room presents the latest in kid-friendly design. The ideas with paint and fabric are so smart, they might even graduate to the home's more grown-up spaces.

White on the walls, carpeting, chair, ceiling fan, and lamp balances the strong lime green and watermelon red in this showhouse nursery. The designers repeated the patterns and colors throughout the room, often varying the scale.

Want your baby's room to top the style charts? Then shower it with a hip color scheme that will intrigue the eye and the imagination.

In this Chicago-area showhouse nursery, a bold mix of lime green and watermelon red provides an ideal growing environment, as well as a strong introduction to color. This unexpected scheme, with its combination of patterns and scales, results in an energetic, contemporary space.

To create this room, the designers first picked fabrics: white and lime green terry cloth, polka dots and plaids, and a lively animal print. Then, they went about coloring the vanilla white room.

At the colorful side wall, for example, they repeated the polka-dot pattern in giant size. Layered with several washes of lime green and accented with watermelon dots, the wall treatment grabs your attention. "The polka-dot wall stops you dead," designer Kim Elia says.