Nursery (room)
room for infants or small children
A nursery is a bedroom within a house or other dwelling set aside for an infant or toddler.
Historically, European nurseries had little decorations and were away from visitors' sight. An article in the 1842 British Cyclopedia of Domestic Medicine and Surgery instructed the readers to never use a shaded room for a nursery and stressed the importance of ventilation. The author, Thomas Andrew, also suggested using two rooms for the nursery to move between them during the cleaning. He neither encourages nor warns against adding colourful objects into the nursery, simply mentioning that they catch children's attention.
Starting from 1870s, authors such as Mary Eliza Haweis started advocating for a more interactive approach: they stressed the importance of visual stimulation for children's development. As a result, colourful patterned wallpapers appeared on the market. The author of a 1900 article on nursery décor was concerned with the idea that spartan conditions with little ornamentation have a positive impact on children's development, suggesting putting colourful pictures on the walls instead. At the same time, he warned against the excessive use of very bright colours in the night nursery where the child slept. Hermann Muthesius suggested covering the nursery walls with wood panels or washable paint, for hygienic reasons.
“Nursery (room)” enters the record as room for infants or small children. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Nursery, room and infants can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Nursery (room)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Nursery, room and infants provides the most credible route into that argument.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1741939. The Library of Congress control number is sh85023774. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1842 and 1900.
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This entry incorporates text from “Nursery (room)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.