Nursery Colour Scheme

Before I show you the finished nursery, I'll share our colour scheme. We bought this house hoping that we'd need to make one of the upstairs bedrooms a nursery and my pregnancy was confirmed the day we took possession. We've actually had swatches up on the walls since December while we tried to choose the perfect colour for Maude's room.

We loved the dark walls in Rudy's old nursery (below) but we have been choosing light and airy wall colours in this house and a dark room (although very serene and relaxing) wouldn't quite fit.

We love the soft pink we chose for Rudy's "big girl" room and I love the way the lighter walls accent the sloped ceiling without making the room feel claustrophobic. We thought we'd want a colour just as light but decided on a more neutral theme. 

Here's a photo of the nursery that I took the day we moved in. The room has a lot of floor space but the sloped ceilings made it best suited as a child's room. The dark navy wallpaper made the space feel much smaller than it really was and the stucco ceilings were begging to be smoothed.

We had a crew smooth the ceilings and prime the walls. We decided we wanted a light grey wall colour. We chose to stick with a Farrow and Ball colour, since they are highly pigmented and often change beautifully with the light.



We tested our favourite warm greys: Cornforth White, Dimpse, Ammonite, Elephant's Breath and Blackened. In the end, we opted for Ammonite, which seemed like a good backdrop for the light wood and blue accents we had in mind.

More nursery photos coming soon but here's a quick look:

Nursery Before and After (and Source List)

WE DID IT!!  I can't believe we actually finished the nursery before the baby came.  I half expected my water to break just as we were adding the finishing touches... but it didn't!

Our house has three bedrooms but we determined this room would be the nursery the day we moved in.  Of course, it needed some work.  What else is new?  After removing layers of flooring and staining the hardwood.  We sort of left this room for over a year.  In fact, it sort of became a dumping ground of sorts for all sorts of tools and construction materials.  There were spans of 4 months when I didn't set foot in this room.

Eventually, we started to think about paint colours.  We bought a pretty chandelier and Corey added more outlets.  At this point it was cold outside so we used the room to paint the nursery furniture.  With LOTS of help from my family, the room and furniture were painted.  (Walls- Farrow and Ball Hague Blue, Furniture- White and Farrow and Ball Teresa's Green) 

And now, without further adieu, here are our before and after shots from other angles.

We added lots of personal details, like the lace sheers which came from a close friend, who used them in her daughter's nursery over 20 years ago.  I also used Anthropologie knobs instead of traditional tie-backs for an extra pop of colour.

The change table was actually an Ikea sink cabinet, which we mistakenly purchased too large.  We had already used it so we couldn't return it but we saved it for this purpose and Corey added a top.

The bentwood rocker was a sentimental Craigslist purchase from years ago and it looks just like the rocker my mother had when I was little.

The alpaca throw was a luxury purchase from Cambie.

The armoire was from my own nursery 32 years ago and the book shelves are simply Ikea spice racks.  We added a mother-in-law's tongue plant to the room because they are known for their air purifying capabilities.

The artwork above the fireplace is from The Animal Print Shop.  We thought it would be neat to have real baby animal photographs instead of cartoons.

I made the artwork above the crib.

... As well as the knit "R" on the shelf.  The quote was custom made at our request by this Etsy seller.

We purchased the mobile on Etsy.

And that's our finished room.  We are finally ready to welcome the little de Sa-Brown.  Any day now we will be a family of five (dogs count) and we can't wait for the fun to begin!