We welcomed our child, Toussaint August (we call him August), in January 2019, which gave me a chance to design a nursery. We chose to be surprised about the gender, so I designed a gender-neutral nursery using a mixture of hand-me-downs, new items and DIYs.

We took what had been a flex guest room and hangout space and turned it into August’s room since it’s in the back of the house and gets the best natural light in the mornings. We just needed a dresser that could also be used as a changing table, a crib, bookshelf and rocking chair. I chose to have some fun with paint and lighting.

Paint

I thought a bright and light coral would be a nice gender-neutral color for the nursery that would be fun to transition to a toddler bedroom. I went with Salmon Peach by Benjamin Moore and painted a large triangle to frame the crib as a feature wall, then continued the triangular shapes on the ceiling across the room to the other side.

Furniture

We were lucky and got a hand-me-down Oeuf crib from neighbors and a rocking chair in the same wood tone from friends. I chose a bookshelf with a flat top shelf at the right height to act as a side table to the rocking chair since there wasn’t room for a side table as well as a bookshelf. I bought a new Ikea Tarva dresser, painted it Spearmints by Behr in a high gloss finish and swapped out the pulls for leather ones I found on Etsy to make the dresser a little more masculine. I also got a large pendant light from Ikea that casts shapes on the walls when the light is on and swagged it to the corner.

Decor

Some fun touches to the decor were fitted French fry sheets from Spearmint Love, a blanket that my goddaughter knitted for us and a watercolor of a family of elephants by artist Katrina Pete that Daniel actually bought me for our first wedding anniversary.

The design of this nursery – and of course, bringing home a healthy, happy baby – brought me joy for years.