Blue Baby Girl Nursery – Closetful of Clothes

You will die when you see the before pictures of Charlotte’s nursery. When I tell you our home had a funky layout, I’m not kidding. For some reason, Andrew and I are drawn to funk. Don’t get me wrong, we want to fix the funk. But for some odd reason, we gravitate towards spaces that make no sense and that others won’t see value in and enjoy transforming them into great, useable spaces. Our place had a lot of funk (I mean a LOT), but Charlotte’s nursery was probably the weirdest part about the whole place. It was being used as a sitting room/office/guest room but had multiple doors leading into it and some very bizarre ’80s style built-in paneling, not to mention wall to wall carpet and yellow walls. It was almost serving as a huge hallway with all the doors it had leading to other parts of the home, and it made zero sense. But it’s a pretty large room with great closets, so we knew it should be used as a bedroom. I do think the previous owners used it in part as a guest room, but must have been a little awkward for their guests. Because it’s so large and has a great windowed sunroom off of it, we toyed with the idea of making it a master bedroom and closed off one of the walls in order to accommodate a king size bed should it ever become one. But we ended up turning another area into a master suite and so this room became Charlotte’s nursery. After we sealed off some of the doors and created a nice, private bedroom (and got rid of the hideous built-ins and refinished the floors and fixed the closets and replaced the doors and added overhead light and I could go on), it was time to work on the design. I was thrilled at the prospect of designing a really cute nursery and knew I wanted to use wallpaper in this room. I love wallpaper and a nursery is the perfect place to use it. I fell in love with a beautiful blue Thibaut wallpaper that would easily work for a grownup bedroom but also felt sweet enough for a nursery, and that really set the tone for our blue baby girl nursery.

I love using a print as a jumping off point for a bedroom, especially for little kids’ rooms. In this case, I felt like the wallpaper was the important first step to designing the room because it set the tone for everything else. I love pretty pink and floral wallpapers, but blue is my favorite color and I really loved the idea of not creating an overly girly nursery. I wanted to keep in mind future buyers since we knew we wouldn’t be staying in our place for too long, so I love how the print is sophisticated enough to work for any age and versatile enough that it could work for a master or teen room or guest room. I also love that if we decided to bunk up the kids or switch rooms, the blue could work. But honestly, I’m thrilled with how our blue baby girl nursery turned out, and I love that even in this day and age, the blue feels a little unexpected for a little girl nursery.

With the wallpaper set, we decided to keep the rest of the room pretty clean and white, especially because we restored the original pine hardwood floors and used a dark finish (for a number of reasons I will go into another time but mostly to get out the red tint that pine can give). We repurposed James’ old Pottery Barn Kids crib since he graduated to a big boy bed and his old Pottery Barn Kids rocker. I love a white linen rocker and has worked in two nurseries now, but I will say it gets so dirty. We got slipcovers, but I’m scared to wash or dry clean it because I’ve heard horror stories about the slipcovers not fitting back on so I have just been living with the dirty look, which if you know me, drives me crazy. We actually painted a huge Restoration Hardware dresser from our bedroom in the city that fit the space and while the DIY paint job isn’t the best, it looks great in the space. I had been loving this Ballard mirror forever so I was thrilled to find a place for it over the dresser, and then I added a thin bookshelf from Target for extra storage that looks more expensive than it is IMO (sorry, the baskets are old Pottery Barn Kids and it doesn’t look like they have them anymore). To bring in some feminine elements, I found the sweetest crib sheet and rocker pillow from Hill House Home, and I think it just makes the room. The painting over the crib is an old painting we’ve had from family for awhile, and I like that it’s not a traditional nursery print but adds some color. The room has a bit of an odd shape to it, so rather than trying to make a rectangular or circular rug work, we went with a furry sheepskin. It adds such a cozy softness to the room, the kids (and Dakota) love hanging out on it, and the shape works with the space. Almost forgot, the ceiling light is from Pottery Barn Kids and the garden stool is so pretty and I found it for under $100.

Sharing the before/after pics below so you can really get a feel for this transformation and the sources as well for our blue baby girl nursery.