You are currently viewing Black & White & Red Patterns for Your Newborn (Free Printable)

Black & White & Red Patterns for Your Newborn (Free Printable)

I’ve been working on a lot of materials for baby girl (due in September) lately, and one thing I had a lot of fun with was the newborn visual stimulation patterns to use to decorate her environment.

At birth, the visual system is the least-developed of all the sensory systems, and babies are almost completely blind.

It is only through using their vision that they are able to go from simply having a light reflex (pupils that contract and expand in the presence or absence of light), to soon being able to see high-contrast outlines, and soon after that being able to see color, to eventually being able to see as well as you and I do.

High-contrast (black and white) patterns are one of the few things that baby can actually see in the early days, so decorating your baby’s environment with these types of colors and patterns will encourage them to actually use (and therefore, grow) their vision.

If baby’s environment is full of pale, low-contrast colors that they can’t even see, they won’t have anything to look at or focus on and won’t have the opportunity that they could have had to grow their vision.

I’ve created 120 different full-page (8×11 size) pattern posters, 60 in black and white and 60 in black and white with red details (red is one of the first colors baby can see). You can use these however you want, including:

  • Hang them on the walls (and ceiling!) near baby’s crib, changing table, bathtub, where you nurse or bottle-feed, and wherever baby will spend time
  • Hang some in the car for baby to look at while he’s in his car seat
  • Hang some from a mobile
  • Put some in a picture frame or flip-board for baby to look at while he’s doing tummy time
  • Switch them out regularly to keep baby interested and engaged

I’m planning on creating a few different flip-boards (basically just laminating the posters and attaching them together with loose-leaf rings) and keeping them in various places throughout the house. This way it will be super easy to change the patterns out – cause I really need easy or it’s probably not gonna happen.

Here are links to the pdf files. Click on each image to download:

Black and white newborn stimulation cards
Black and white and red stimulation cards