How to Design a Gender Neutral Nursery

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My husband and I spent a lot of time and effort in designing our son's nursery. Since we were first time parents, we had all the time in the world to think things out before our son's arrival.

When it comes to designing your baby's nursery, it is easy to become too focused on only the decor aspect. But it is also very important to consider the functionality of your space. Whether you have a big room or a small room, you will want to arrange your baby's new things in a way that will allow you to navigate the room as efficiently and easily as possible. Now, back to the decor!

One of my favorite things about designing our son's room was creating the weathered wood wall. My husband salvaged this wood from the city. We then treated a few of the wood pieces with a vinegar solution, which darkened the wood. 

The final look was everything I was hoping for. When we moved, I would have done anything to take this wall with us. My husband promised he would create an even better one in our new home one day. If you are looking to do a wood wall, but want to go the easy route, you can try this peel and stick wood wall - it will give you the look without the trouble of searching for and installing distressed wood. 

Next up was the lighting. This bedroom already had a ceiling fan in it with a light, but I wanted some lamps as well. Since the ceiling lamp did not have a dimmer, I wanted lamps so that I could adjust the amount of light at any given time. 

Since we were low on floor space (the room size was 8 feet x 10 feet), I opted for wall lamps. The "theme" of our son's room evolved as I put the design together. I didn't want anything super theme-y, so we kept it subtle with moons and stars along with a few safari animals. I found the PERFECT moon lamp at PBK, and the battery operated metal star lights from Michael's were exactly what the wood wall needed. 

At first, my husband wanted to BUILD our son's crib. I was slightly against that idea (due to all of the safety requirements that a crib must meet), so instead he decided to build our son's changing table. He handcrafted the most gorgeous table. I ended up finding the storage bins at Home Goods after the project was completed. They were just the right size!

The table was built to fit his changing pad, and also to have room for storage on top for diapers, diaper cream, Aquaphor, wipes, and baby moisturizer. If I was changing a 3 am diaper, one star light was just enough to illuminate the table without causing our son to become wide awake. 

We stored most of his clothing in the storage bins. Theo often liked to help me put his clothes away after being folded. I have nick-named him "The Anti-help". But it's okay because he is so darn cute pulling out all of my folded laundry!

You also want things to be safe in your baby's room (naturally, of course!) In the picture below, you can see that at first, we had our son's crib below the moon wall lamp. I knew almost instantly that we would end up moving the crib - it was too scary to think about the possibility of him pulling the heavy moon lamp onto himself in his crib. Make sure any cords are out of your baby's reach!

This is how our furniture arrangement ended up. With the crib now below the window, we also shortened the pull chains on the blinds so that they were completely out of reach. Since our room is small, we went with the most adorable Babyletto Swivel Glider chair - it fit perfectly into the corner of his room. I wanted a glider, but everything I saw in the baby stores were way too big. This chair was a perfect fit. 

In addition to the changing table, my husband also hand-crafted our son a book shelf. This shelf ended up only being able to hold half of his books, so we always kept his favorites on his shelf. He would point to the books that he wanted read to him from his crib. In the apartment where we are living now, we have the same arrangement, and he continues to request books from his shelf. 

When we lived in this house, our son alway loved spending hours in his room. He would play with his safari animals and constantly try to climb up into his crib. 

I LOVED how his room turned out. There is only one thing that I would have done differently with his nursery design, and it has everything to do with that crisp white rug that you see on the floor. Never again. It was impossible to keep clean, especially in a few of the heavier traffic areas. But other than that, I was very happy with his nursery, and I cannot wait to create a new room for our son once we move into our new house!