We are anxiously awaiting the arrival of our first child – and it’s a boy – and are so excited to share his simple nursery design. When I first posted a picture of the nursery on my stories, I was so nervous because there’s actually no “theme”. In this blogpost, I’m walking you through my inspiration and hopefully you can find some things you like for your boy nursery, too!
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Why I went with a simple nursery design
When I first started piecing our simple nursery design together in my second trimester, I decided against a theme because I truly didn’t find one that I liked.
I always find it funny that nursery designs and clothing choices are purely up to the parents and have little to do with our babies’ personalities (because we have yet to meet them). With that in mind, I found myself wanting to incorporate pieces that both Luke and I liked.
In our nursery, you’ll find items from our own childhoods and inspiration from different eras of time. I think that’s what makes our nursery feel so “homey” because there’s no design or theme in mind – just a combination of two people’s childhoods!
Finding my inspiration for a no themed nursery
My main nursery inspiration came from a North Carolina influencer/blogger, Pretty in the Pines. After following her for several years (even before she had moved to NYC) I found myself scrounging out her LTK account for her nursery design when they lived in New York.
When I was reviewing her nursery items, I too found that there really wasn’t a theme for her items, but instead a curated pick of items that really worked well together! I had the same goal in mind.
Other areas that I found inspiration from was obviously Pinterest. I searched “vintage nursery” or “boy nurseries” and pinned items that I found here and there.
Sure enough, another blogger, Daryl Ann Denner, had recently had a baby girl and her nursery was designed by one of my favorite interior designers. I also found some inspiration from the pictures that they posted!
Simple nursery design tip 1: Color scheme
Color scheme is something you want to nail down almost immediately when trying to find a simple nursery design. Whether or not you know your gender of your baby will help you sway more feminine or masculine, or you may be someone who just wants to lean completely gender neutral.
Either way – nail down your color scheme first. For us, we decided on a few colors and built off from there:
- Dark walnut
- Forest green
- Cream/white
Once we had our main colors, we began to incorporate other colors that also worked well with these such as lighter greens and navy. If you have colors that are in your “no list” be sure to keep that in mind! For us, ours was baby blue, AKA “Carolina Blue” which was actually super hard given we are having a boy!
Simple nursery design tip 2: Decide on wall art
After we decided on our color scheme, the second thing we did was purchase wall art. I feel like taking up the space on the walls in your nursery will help you visualize where and what main furniture items you’d like to incorporate in the space.
For me, I did a lot of hunting and searching on Etsy to find the perfect pieces. The first item was this “W” letter flag and I built around it. Because we didn’t have a theme, I really started focusing on other items that meant a lot to Luke and I or things that would tie the space together. Hence, the dog, script “I love you” art and a floral pattern.
On other sides of the wall we incorporated pieces that Luke liked from our alma mater, and of course a newspaper article of our college basketball team winning the championship this year!
Simple nursery design tip 3: Find accents where able
Last but not least, to achieve a simple nursery design, you have to use accent patterns where able or necessary. For us – I loved forest greens like our Dagne Dover bag!
In our nursery, you’ll find that our rocker has a subtle plaid pattern. This is really the only area of our nursery that isn’t a solid color and we are okay with that! The other area was in art pieces (like the floral piece above the crib) and in stuffed animals or pillows.
The key to keeping your nursery simple is to not overcrowd with too many patterns, textures or colors. Just like branding your business 🤪
Conclusion
Overall, we totally know that we likely won’t even be using our nursery for at least the first few weeks or months. I have really enjoyed piecing items together to really make it our own for our sweet son!
If you are like me and want a simple nursery design, I highly recommend combing through these three tips and that’s it! You can always spruce things up with more textured items but overall, having a theme just didn’t fit what we wanted.