I’m so excited that we’ve finally finished decorating the nursery for our little one! Even though baby will sleep in our room for the first few months, I wanted to have his/her bedroom all ready before the birth so that we don’t need to stress about painting or buying furniture in those early months. I’m really pleased with how the room has turned out and I think it was well worth all of the hours of deliberations!
Colour Scheme
As we don’t know if we are having a boy or a girl, we wanted to go for a gender neutral colour scheme. I love white as I think it makes everything look cleaner and brighter, but we also wanted to room to have some colour and not be too minimalist. In the end, we decided to paint all of the walls in white (Dulux Timeless) and have a geometric pattern on one of the walls to add the pop of colour we were after.
The pattern itself was fairly easy to create – we just used tape to randomly create the shapes and then carefully painted inside the gaps. It took much longer to actually choose the colours than do the painting! In the end we went for Lemon Tropics, Mint Macaroon, Dusted Fondant and Melon Sorbet (all Dulux). I think they work really well together and are bright enough without being garish.
Furniture
In terms of furniture, we already had a lovely oak bookcase which we wanted to use in the nursery so tried to choose the other pieces of furniture around that. However, as the room isn’t big, I didn’t want to have a full set of oak furniture as that would have made the room feel even smaller. I managed to find a white cot with oak feet from a company called Mebel Vox (sold on Wayfair) which was the perfect way to tie to oak bookcase to the white walls. We decided to go for a cot that converts into a cot bed which should mean we get some extra use out of it. The cot also has three different mattress height settings so that as baby grows we can lower the mattress.
Even better, the same company also sell a storage unit which complements the cot and includes multicoloured drawers/cupboard doors. You can choose from a few different colours – we went for the yellow to keep the room feeling bright.
Mattress
We bought the eve baby mattress which feels like it’s going to be very comfy for baby. It’s designed based on the safe sleep guidelines and eve works alongside The Lullaby Trust to ensure that the mattress is as safe as possible. The mattress has an antibacterial cover, a waterproof panel and is a mixture of foam and pocket springs.
We are a little concerned about the temperature of baby’s room as our house can get very warm during the summer. The eve mattress is specially designed to let air flow freely which regulates the temperature in the cot and helps keep baby at a safe temperature which in turn reduces the risk of SIDS. This is one of the main reasons we decided to go for this mattress. We’ve recently switched our own pillows to another brand which has a similar air flow technology and we are both sleeping so much better and not feeling as hot so we’ve got high hopes for the mattress.
Extra Bits and Bobs
Next up was finding something for the walls. I came across these adorable animal prints and knew right away that they would be perfect! The most time consuming bit here was trying to find frames for them. I wanted to get really thin oak frames but after many hours of searching had to abandon that dream. All of the oak frames were just too wide.
Luckily, I spotted these copper frames in Paperchase and they are the exact size I was looking for. We did have a bit of an issue getting them up as I ordered them online and forgot to check the fittings on the back. These frames only have a stand and no wall fixtures so Mik had to remove the stand and attach some fittings from B&Q. It worked out in the end though and even though they weren’t what I imagined I think they look lovely on the wall.
We ordered the blind from Blinds-2-Go. We’ve used them for every other blind in our house and have always had a good experience with them. You can order free samples of multiple blinds before making your decision which is so helpful and you can then get the blinds made to whatever size you need.
Since I took all the photos above, we added this little polar bear picture above the cot. I love this as Mik actually made the three origami polar bears for me for a 1-year anniversary present (the paper anniversary!).
I love peeking into baby’s nursery now that it’s almost ready – it’s so exciting and is making me very impatient for his/her arrival (which may be sooner than expected based on recent midwife/hospital visits!)