neutral nursery in white and beige

House Tour | Our Scandinavian-inspired neutral nursery

It’s been a long (loooong) road to get here, but last week we finally put the finishing touches to our baby boy’s nursery, and here it is!

Scandinavian nursery for baby boy with neutral colours, scandi-style changing table and rug

neutral nursery in white and beigeNeutral nursery details: cot / changing table / toy box / sofa / rug

Our aim here was to create a reasonably neutral nursery (We know we’re having a boy, but we’re not really into gender-specific colours) in the Scandinavian-inspired style I’m always stalking on Instagram and Pinterest. As anyone who’s visited/seen our house will know, we’re very much into light, bright spaces and neutral colour schemes, and we wanted the nursery to reflect that. We also wanted to create a whimsical look which wasn’t too baby-ish: this is the room he’ll have for as long as we stay in this house, so we went for something that we can adapt easily as he grows. And, of course, once he’s old enough to have his own preferences for decor, it’ll be up to him how he wants it all to look, but for now, we were keen to stick to a neutral nursery, which reflects our own taste, but which will hopefully have enough little details to interest a baby, too.

Here are some of the ways we tried to bring a little bit of Scandinavian-inspired style to our neutral nursery:

Kidsmill sixties cot

Neutral nursery with tree decal on grey wall

Scandi-style baby furniture

01.

Scandi-style furniture

Our starting point for this room was the nursery furniture, which is all from the ‘Sixties’ range c/o Kidsmill. I love the white wood and oak legs (which just so happen to match the legs on our sofa, which was moved down from the bedroom), and I also love the simplicity of the style, which is very much our taste – in fact, if I didn’t need it for the nursery, I’d happily have the changing table/ dresser anywhere else in the house, too. (The nappy disposal unit that’s hiding on the other side of it, meanwhile, maybe not so much…)

All of the furniture has special soft close/open mechanism – so the dresser drawers just push to open, while the lid of the toy box won’t snap shut and trap little fingers. The cot, meanwhile, is designed to be turned into a bed once he’s a little older, like so:

Kidmsill cot bed - Sixties range

The extra wood panel for the front is currently in the attic, but you basically just take the cot bars off one side and put this on instead. For now, though, it looks like this:

baby clothes in white cot bear

I s(I got the little trousers and top from H&M – SO much cuteness! The little bear on the side, meanwhile, is our Whispbear white noise machine!)

As I mentioned in last week’s pregnancy diary, all of this furniture was assembled on site by our delivery driver, Bart, who had driven all the way from The Netherlands with it (Er, not just for us, I hasten to add: he had other deliveries, too!). We’re both flat out with work right now, so that was a huge help to us – and he even left us a little pair of wooden clogs, too: thanks, Bart!

Thank you02.

Light coloured walls

Because we don’t get a lot of natural light here in Scotland, especially in the winter, we’ve gone for light (mostly white) walls throughout our house, in a bid to try to keep it as bright as possible. For the nursery, we’ve gone for the painfully obvious option of keeping three walls white, while the third is the same grey shade we used in the master bedroom: we actually mixed this ourselves for the bedroom wall, using plain white and a random, much darker grey and had enough of it left over to do this wall in the nursery, so that saved us a bit of cash, there.

To make it a little more interesting, we then added the tree decal, which we bought on eBay, plus the ‘Hello’ sign, which we painted gold from the original white:

neutral nursery with gold 'hello' sign

That gold accent colour is also picked up in the handles of the closet doors (These were originally sliding mirrored doors, but Terry replaced them with wooden ones, and also completely rebuilt the inside of the closet, to maximise the storage!), and these awesome gold stars, which my mum found at a local garden centre:

gold star decorations in neutral baby nurseryThese were actually being sold as Christmas decorations (Which is why my mum originally bought them), but as soon as we laid eyes on them, we knew they’d look good in this rather bare corner of the room: and they’re much too nice to only been seen at Christmas, anyway!

Speaking of decor:

03.

Bold prints and typography

Gallery wall in neutral nursery

I’ve already shown you the gallery wall we put together: these prints are all c/o Desenio, and yes, they’re very securely attached to the wall, so the baby can’t kick them down! Although we wanted to create a neutral nursery, we didn’t want it to be totally lacking in personality, and, as most of my regular readers will know by now, I’m a bit of a sucker for a typography-based print, so these were an easy choice for me.

The two animal prints, meanwhile, were Terry’s choice, and, as I mentioned in my previous post on these, we just really liked the idea of the baby being surrounded by a bunch of friendly little animals! Speaking of which…

04.

The Mammoths

rocking mammoth for toddlerI’ve shown you these before, too: basically, a lot of the nurseries I’d pinned on Pinterest had a Scandinavian-style wooden rocking sheep in them. I absolutely loved it, and was going to buy one… until I came across these rocking mammoths, and fell hard for them instead. These were c/o Simply Colours at Not On the High Street, and the the large mammoth is a ride-on rocker, while the smaller one is a pull-along toy. They’re joined by a selection of other animals, including Fin, the Sheep Night Light, and E.T. who turned up unexpectedly last week, having been cunningly snuck into the room by my mum (OR WAS HE? Because, I mean, it COULD be that E.T just arrived all by himself, couldn’t it?):

brown teddy bear

Fin, the sheep night light

plush E.T toy on mini Eames rocking chair

I was kind of obsessed with E.T. as a child, so this is a nice little nod to my own childhood, as well as being another friendly face for the nursery. “I just love all the little faces,” I said to Terry when we were in here earlier this week, and it’s true: I feel like, everywhere I look, there’s a cute little critter of some kind smiling at me, and I’m all about that, obviously.

collection of soft toys in baby's nursery(THE FACES! Also, I realise no one will believe me on this, but we actually DIDN’T pick these toys based on the fact that they’d work well with our neutral nursery decor – in fact, three of them were gifts. I’m not going to deny that this small fact makes me happy, though…)

Speaking of E.T., he’s sitting on another one of my favourite things about this room:

05.

Mini Eames Rocking chair

We have quite a few Eames-inspired chairs in our house now (You can see some of them in my kitchen and living room tours), and as soon as I realised you could buy mini versions, I knew we had to get one. We found this one on eBay, and while the baby obviously won’t be using it for quite some time, I loved it too much to resist it!

Neutral nursery with beige retro sofa and chevron rug06.

Chevron rug

A lot of the Scandinavian nurseries I’ve seen have wood floors, rather than carpet: Terry really wanted to follow suit, and have the same/similar white wood we have in the bedroom, but while I love the way it looks, I wanted to stick with the existing carpet: partly because I think it’ll be softer on little knees etc once the baby starts crawling and walking, but also because we have the same carpet throughout this floor of the house (With the exception of the bathroom and my dressing room, which I actually regret now…), and I just prefer it that way, rather than having different floor coverings for each room.

As a compromise, we did get this gorgeous chevron rug c/o Modern Rugs: some of you might recall me talking about it in my pregnancy diary a few weeks ago. Because this is a very neutral nursery, we picked an equally neutral rug, which I think works really well with the rest of the colour scheme, and helps tie everything together. We have three of these rugs now, and I honestly can’t recommend them enough: they’re just so soft!

07.

Wooden ruler and storage box

entrance of neautral Scandinavian-inspired nursery

book chest in baby's nursery

baby shoes on nursery floor

oversized wooden ruler in baby's nurseryAt the entrance of the room, meanwhile, we have the gold ‘Hello’ sign I mentioned above, underneath which is the little wooden storage bench my parents bought a few weeks ago. I think of this as the ”book bench”, because it’s already filled with books, and with plenty more to come, I’m sure. Like the toy box, this has a soft-close mechanism on the lid to keep it child-friendly, and, when he’s older, it’ll be another place to sit and read, or put his shoes on, or whatever.

Behind the door, we also have a giant wooden ruler from Lovestruck Interiors, I mentioned in last week’s pregnancy diary, and which we think will be a nice way to track his height as he gets bigger.

(Oh, and the dustbin you can see in the first photo is just a laundry bin from IKEA!)

08.

Wooden toys

wooden sheep toy

Finally, just to add a few little finishing touches, we also bought this wooden sheep toy, plus the alphabet blocks you can see dotted around the room. Again, we know the baby won’t be playing with things like this for a while (And yes, we also know he’s going to want a bunch of garish, plastic toys that won’t be remotely in keeping with our neutral nursery decor, and that’s absolutely fine!), so these are really just there to make it look a little less empty, really.

Oh, and just in case you’re curious about what this room looked like before we got to work on it, here it is when we first moved in:

Nursery: before

A not-so neutral nursery…

I think I like it better now, all things considered…

I was really keen to get this room finished, just so I could feel a little more organised, but, while we’ll be using the changing table and closet etc, the baby will actually be sleeping in our room for the first few months, so we haven’t bothered to set up the baby monitor etc yet: we also have a couple of other items on the way for it, although nothing essential, so, just in case I didn’t post enough photos for you, here’s a little video Terry made of the finished room:

[Thanks to Kidsmill for collaborating on this post!]

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books by Amber Eve
COMMENTS
  • Mel

    REPLY

    How beautiful! What a wonderful aesthetic for a nursery ?.

    November 22, 2017
  • Alison S

    REPLY

    LOVE it! So beautiful and who wouldn’t want a woolly mammoth!! So excited for you.

    November 22, 2017
  • The room is stunning. Well done guys x

    November 22, 2017
  • What a fantastic nursery. And the mammoth is to die for

    November 22, 2017
  • Helen Love

    REPLY

    Absolutely fantastic! Love it. xx

    November 22, 2017
  • Love it all. I need me a mammoth!

    November 22, 2017
  • Absolutely darling!! ❤️

    November 22, 2017
  • You’ve done a fantastic job 😀

    November 22, 2017
  • Looks lovely. Love the furniture x

    November 22, 2017
  • Lila athanaselis

    REPLY

    Stunning ❤️

    November 22, 2017
  • Erin

    REPLY

    I want to sleep in there! The color palette is so soothing and the room & decor are very cozy.

    November 22, 2017
  • What a beautiful room! Absolutely love those mammoths.

    November 22, 2017
  • Sharon

    REPLY

    That is lovely!!! And the Usborne “That’s not my . . . .” books are our grandkids favorites!!! Your little guy will love them.

    November 22, 2017
  • Gorgeous ❤️

    November 22, 2017
  • Barbara West

    REPLY

    It’s just wonderful!

    November 22, 2017
  • Oh it’s gorgeous Amber! Love the little cuddle sofa and I am seriously considering those mammoths for Evie now! The ruler is such a good idea and I am just loving that baby has his own wardrobe already – we really don’t have enough storage for all of Evie’s clothes in our nursery so that will be invaluable space I’m sure! So excited for the wee man to arrive and get to use the space.

    P.S your changing table is SO organised, I’m in love!

    Jac
    x

    November 22, 2017
  • Brenda

    REPLY

    It is gorgeous!!! So soothing and calm! You did the right thing in staying simple and neutral. When my daughter was born, I went all-out and decorated it with a ton of wall-paper, bright colours, etc… When it was finished it did look cute, but after a year we were stripping off the wallpaper and re-painting — partly because when my daughter was laying in her crib, she found a wallpaper seam to pick at and ended up ripping off a pretty big chunk of wallpaper! The other thing I did later on when my kids were around 7 or 8, I bought them fairly expensive bedroom furniture — another big mistake. I thought it would grow with them, but it ended up being more of a hindrance. They didn’t wreck it or anything, but their needs changed over time (like needing a bigger bed than a twin) and I didn’t want to replace such expensive furniture. So my big 16 year old son is still sleeping in a twin bed, has a big desk and hutch that he doesn’t use, and the toybox is piled high with … stuff. Not sure what is actually in there! I think you have it all figured out anyway, the room is beautiful and it will grow nicely with your sweet baby boy!

    November 22, 2017
  • D. Johnson

    REPLY

    Beautiful, with awareness of safety, and just enough touches of your personality (love the Hello sweater!). Well done!

    November 22, 2017
  • Stunning! And putting a sofa in there is genius! H xx

    November 22, 2017
  • Maria

    REPLY

    Beautiful! Lucky baby ?

    November 22, 2017
  • Myra

    REPLY

    Lovely calm colours that will be good for inducing sleep as there are no bright distracting colours. It’s beautiful and that sofa works better in the nursery, good decision. Have you put a dimmer switch on the light, they are good for babies.

    Good job Amber and Terry, you will have a very happy baby in his beautiful nursery.

    November 22, 2017
  • It’s perfect!

    November 22, 2017
  • Ophelia

    REPLY

    Every detail is perfect! Also in love with the mammoths. And the rug. And the sheep (both of them). I love to see your excitement shine through all the little things he won’t be using for a while but you already picturing his a toddler ?

    November 22, 2017
  • Alicja

    REPLY

    Beautiful room! I love how neutral and easy on the eyes it is while still having so many interest points and personality! You did a great job! Can I hire you in like 10 years to help me with interior design? I promise I won’t need a shed…

    November 22, 2017
  • Trudy

    REPLY

    Gorgeous! Your baby is one lucky boy!

    November 22, 2017
  • Myra

    REPLY

    Love the video Terry

    November 23, 2017
  • Really awesome. The baby boy will love it.
    Greets, Bianca

    http://ladyandmum.blogspot.de

    November 23, 2017
  • Wow, this is so gorgeous – I’m completely stunned by the transformation!! Despite no plans for babies for a little while (would be a bit of a disaster with the wedding and honeymoon coming up!), I’ve pinned just about every picture in this post for future reference because this is simply my ideal nursery! I’ve always wanted to do a gender neutral colour scheme for a nursery and have had grey and yellow in mind for a long time, so I guess adding yellow would be the only thing I would do differently in my house. And all the faces!!

    November 23, 2017
  • Sarah B

    REPLY

    I love the whole look, what a wonderful nursery! The fluffy carpet is something I would definitely covet. But I must say my favourite parts are the tree wall decal, and the golden star ornaments your mom found! They add a little touch of magic to the room 😉 Well, and the mammoths…. See, I just can’t choose my favourite part!

    November 24, 2017
  • Beautiful

    November 24, 2017
  • This is all absolutely gorgeous! Especially love the tree and the mammoths but everything looks so good together.

    Nicola // pink-confetti.co.uk

    November 24, 2017
  • Shona

    REPLY

    Can you tell me where your beautiful white ceiling light is from please.

    January 14, 2018
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