Summer should be the easiest season for a nursery. The light is generous and there is none of the heating-related juggling that winter demands. And yet, for many parents, summer turns out to be the season that causes the most disruption to a baby's sleep. The room that felt perfectly calm in spring becomes warm, bright at five in the morning, and harder to settle in.
The good news is that a nursery does not need to compromise on aesthetics and functionality to manage the heat well. The choices that keep a room cool, soothing, and restful in summer are largely the same choices that make a nursery beautiful all year round. Good design and good thermal comfort work together. This guide works through the practical, design-led choices that keep a nursery cool and restful through the warmer months.
What 'Cool Enough' Means
Before looking at design choices, it helps to know what you are actually aiming for. The Lullaby Trust and the NHS recommend a room temperature of between 16 and 20 degrees Celsius for a baby's sleep environment, year-round. The Children's Sleep Charity puts the ideal slightly narrower, around 16 to 18 degrees. In practice, most homes in summer will be above this range during the day and need active management to bring the nursery back down by bedtime.
This is a target you should keep in mind throughout the rest of this guide, because every design choice that follows is, in one way or another, in service of holding the room as close to this range as the weather allows, without resorting to anything that feels like a compromise on the room's character.
Window Treatments
If there is one decision that affects a nursery's summer comfort more than any other, it is the choice of window treatment. Windows are where heat enters a room, and they are also where light floods in during mornings, long before most babies want to be awake.
1. Choose blackout with proper insulation, not just light-blocking
The instinct with blackout curtains and blinds is usually to think only about darkness. But a well-made blackout treatment does double duty: it blocks light and it insulates against heat transfer. Triple-pass blackout linings, the kind used in properly made curtains and Roman blinds, do not merely darken a room; they slow the rate at which outside heat reaches the glass and radiates into the space. This is the single most effective design lever available for keeping a south- or west-facing nursery liveable in summer heat.
2. Cellular and honeycomb shades perform exceptionally well against heat
Cellular and honeycomb shades trap air in cells like double-glazed windows to create a barrier, keeping heat in during winter and out in summer. Independent testing cited by major window treatment manufacturers shows cellular shades blocking more than 70% of summer heat transfer through a window. For a nursery with strong afternoon sun, this is one of the most effective and visually unobtrusive solutions available.
3. Layer for control across the day
A single blackout treatment gives you one setting: open or closed. A layered approach, such as a voile or sheer curtain paired with a blackout blind or lined curtain behind it, lets you filter strong daylight during waking hours without plunging the room into total darkness, and gives you the option of full blackout for naps and night sleep. This layering also adds visual depth to a nursery, which is an alignment of function and aesthetics rather than a trade-off.
4. Watch the fabric, not just the function
Some blackout fabrics use PVC or foam backings to achieve full opacity, and these can off-gas volatile organic compounds, a process that accelerates with heat and direct sun exposure on the fabric. For a nursery specifically, look for blackout linings that carry OEKO-TEX certification, which confirms the fabric has been tested against a wide range of harmful substances and is safe for the prolonged close contact a nursery involves.
Note: Whatever window treatment you choose, cordless or motorised operation is non-negotiable in a nursery. Hanging cords pose a strangulation hazard once a baby becomes mobile and curious, and the safety guidance from window treatment manufacturers and child safety organisations alike is consistent on this point.
Furniture Placement
The most efficient window treatments in the world cannot fully compensate for a cot positioned in the wrong place. Furniture placement is a free design lever, and in summer it becomes an important one.
1. Keep the cot off the direct sun line
A cot positioned directly in front of or beside a window that receives strong direct sunlight will run consistently warmer than one positioned against an internal wall, away from the glass. If the room's layout allows it, the cot belongs on the wall furthest from the window's direct sun path. This is a layout decision made once, at the planning stage, that pays back every single day of summer.
2. Use internal walls for the warmest months
Internal walls hold a more stable temperature than external walls, which absorb heat from direct sun throughout the day and release it slowly into the room overnight. Where the floor plan allows it, an internal wall position is the more thermally stable option for the cot, in both summer and winter, for slightly different reasons.
3. Don't block airflow with furniture
A nursery where storage units and wardrobes are positioned to leave the floor area open allows air to circulate properly. Furniture crowded around the room's natural air paths, in front of a window that needs to be opened for ventilation, or blocking a doorway used for cross-ventilation, can create warm, stagnant pockets that are not ideal in the summer.
Colour and Material
There is a relationship between a room's colour palette and how cool and restful it feels, independent of the actual temperature reading.
1. Lean into cooling tones for summer
Soft sage greens, dusty blues, pale aqua, and warm but light neutrals all carry a visual association with cool, shaded, natural environments, water, leaf, early morning sky, that makes a room feel temperate even before the air conditioning or fan has done its work.
2. Avoid very dark, heat-absorbing wall colours on sun-facing walls
Deep, saturated colours absorb more radiant heat than light ones. This is not a reason to avoid colour and personality in a nursery, as restraint for its own sake is rarely the right design instinct, but you should think about colour intensity on a wall that receives several hours of direct summer sun. A pale, light-reflecting base with colour introduced through textiles and accents gives you the personality without the thermal penalty.
3. Choose breathable natural fabrics throughout
Linen, cotton, and muslin are the materials that consistently appear in expert nursery guidance for summer, and the reasoning is straightforward: natural fibres allow air to pass through them in a way synthetic blends do not, which prevents the slightly stuffy, airless quality that heavier or synthetic textiles can create even when the room temperature itself is not extreme. This applies to curtains, bedding, upholstery, and rugs alike.
Ventilation and Airflow
Whether or not a nursery is restful in the summer depends very much on how well-ventilated it is in spite of the summer heat.
1. Keep the room dark and closed during peak daytime heat
Perhaps the best way to keep a south- or west-facing nursery cool by evening is to keep the blackout treatment closed through the hottest part of the afternoon, preventing the room from heating up in the first place, rather than trying to cool it down once the sun has already had its way with the space for several hours.
2. Open windows in the evening, once it's cooler outside than in
Once the external temperature drops below the room's internal temperature, usually from early evening onward, opening a window allows the room to release the heat it absorbed during the day. This single habit, closed and dark by day, open and ventilated by evening, does so much for a nursery's summer comfort.
3. Use a fan to keep air moving
A fan does not lower the air temperature, but moving air feels cooler against the skin and helps prevent a room from feeling still and stuffy. Research published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine found fan use during sleep was associated with a reduced risk of sudden infant death syndrome, particularly in warmer conditions, which makes a fan a sound addition to a summer nursery. The fan should circulate air around the room rather than blow directly onto the baby, and any floor-standing model needs to be well out of reach as a baby becomes mobile.
4. Use a room thermometer
Rather than guessing at the room's temperature by feel, a nursery thermometer lets you make informed decisions about ventilation, bedding, and fan use. Many are designed simply enough to sit on a shelf without disrupting the room's aesthetic.
Lighting
Summer's other defining feature, alongside heat, is light: sunrise before five and a sky that does not fully darken until late evening. This has direct implications for sleep, and the same design principles that handle heat well also tend to handle this.
1. A well-executed blackout solution does the heaviest lifting here too
The light and heat problems in summer are, conveniently, solved by largely the same window treatment decisions described above. A nursery with effective blackout cannot tell the difference between a midsummer dawn and a midwinter night, which is exactly the point.
2. Keep evening lighting warm and low
As the evenings stay light for longer, a warm, dimmable lamp used in the run-up to bedtime helps signal that it is time to wind down, regardless of what the sky outside is doing. This is as much a routine-supporting design choice as a thermal one, but it still shows that a nursery's lighting scheme should work with the season, not get overridden by it.
The design choices in this guide are not exclusively summer choices. A cellular shade that blocks heat in July also insulates against cold in January. A natural linen palette that feels breathable in August feels equally elegant in November. Furniture positioned away from direct sun and on a stable internal wall is simply well-placed furniture, regardless of the season. This is the most useful way to think about summer nursery design: not as a separate seasonal project requiring its own dedicated purchases, but as confirmation that a well-designed nursery, built on good materials, thoughtful placement, and a calm, breathable palette, was already built to handle the warmer months. The work is in getting the fundamentals right from the start.
If you are planning a nursery and want guidance on window treatments, palette, or furniture placement that will serve the room beautifully across every season, our design team at The Baby Cot Shop's Chelsea boutique and Harrods concession are always happy to talk it through. Contact us.