Nursery Decor Plan

One of the most exciting parts about being pregnant & moving at the same time was that I was looking at apartments with a nursery in mind. But since #TheKolaBaby (TKB henceforth) has been sleeping in a bassinet in our room since we came back from the hospital, I actually haven’t decorated the nursery yet. I’ve known what theme and color scheme I wanted for a while, which was helpful when I created our registry so people could buy sheets, blankets, and decor in that theme, but outside of my mind, the nursery doesn’t exist. We used the room as a guest bedroom while my parents were in town, but now that we’re thinking about transitioning TKB to his own room, it’s time to pull it together. And since the feedback on Instagram was that you’d like to see the process of designing rooms in addition to the finished product, here’s my nursery decor plan!

Nursery Inspo

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I always knew I wanted a gender neutral nursery, with a lot of white (haha my usual decor style) and wood. I want to keep things streamlined – I don’t like toys strewn all over the place or ruffled crib skirts or anything of that sort. The nursery will be safari themed (like my baby shower!) but with a focus on elephants, so we have a few elephant decorations and stuffed animals, which adds some grey to the room. So the general color scheme that I’m going for is white, dark wood, and grey, with a lot of woven elements to make it slightly boho.

Nursery – The Before

So the room we’ve chosen for the nursery is adjacent our master bedroom, and sits between our bedroom and the living room. It’s more or less a square room, except that one wall has closets and there is a little nook by the window. One pro and con of this room is that it doesn’t have that much natural light. It’s a pro because it’s easy to have that be the dim environment where the baby sleeps, but a con because we’ll have to implement additional lighting so it’s bright enough during play times, which is a concern we haven’t had to think about for any other room in the apartment.

The Plan – Furnishings

In our bedroom right now, we have a moses basket, recliner chair, and dresser for the baby. Despite my mom’s advice, I couldn’t make furniture decisions for the nursery before we moved, so we bought the recliner in Kenya from Furniture Palace and had the two tone dresser made by Tira Studio. I’ve been going back and forth for a while about whether to ship a crib from the US (so expensive!) or get one made here (I don’t like the designs of any of the premade crib options in Nairobi), but for safety regulation reasons I’m leaning towards an import. The rug in the nursery is actually our Jersey City living room rug. We had it professionally cleaned after the move and the gray lines are perfect for our elephant gray nursery. Although the chair is a recliner I still think I want a small ottoman somewhere – something that can double as a chair once the kid grows a bit.

The Plan – Wallpaper & Decor

I played with the idea of having an accent wall for a while, and decided to do a wallpaper feature wall! I need to figure out soon which wall it should be though – the wall for the crib or the wall for the dresser. Here are some of the wallpapers I’m considering – feel free to chime in about which one you like best!

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The nook isn’t wide enough for the crib to nestle in, so that’s going to be the baby’s play & reading area. Our leaning bookshelf, that used to be in the Jersey City bathroom, currently holds our books in the office (aka the last bedroom of our apartment), but I’m making changes in that room anyway and think it’ll be better suited for the nursery. I plan to use wire and woven baskets to hold toys and stuffed animals since it is a rental and installing shelves onto the walls in a long story.

The last thing I need to figure out is where to put the sleeper sofa that’s currently in the nursery. Part of me wants to move it to the bedroom and have a lounge area there since moving the dresser and armchair out will create tons of space, but that means if we ever have guests we’ll have to move it out again. So the only other place is the office, but with two desks it’s already kinda crowded. You’ll have to stay tuned to see what I come up with!