Anyone else not want their nursery to LOOK like a "nursery"?

[MegBoz]

I don't consider interior design one of my strengths, but MIL is excellent at it, so I often solicit her opinion.

For my baby girl's room, I'm considering a dark wood, slightly Asian-inspired dresser from Pier 1, (for sale on Craig's List!) along with fabric I already have for curtains that is a geometric print. I was unsure if they'd coordinate. MIL said she thought they'd coordinate but it's a bit 'adult' - and not very suitable a kid's room that should be 'cheerful.'

LOL - fair point. Honestly, she's right!

But I hate baby pink. I hate frills & flowers & fussiness. I think furniture should last many years, so I don't see the point in investing in 'kids' furniture, just to have to upgrade when she's a teenager. I know it could get dinged up, but I'm not buying new, so even if it doesn't last all through high school, I can deal with that. Although the furniture my Mom bought when I was born is in great shape & in use now in DS' room!

When she gets older & expresses a preference, I may paint the room pink, buy a frilly comfortorer, or buy princess posters. [No rolleyes smiley anymore?!] Not that it'll thrill me, but I would do it. I'll let her make some of her own choices & express herself when the time comes. But for the first couple years when she won't care anyway? I might as well design the room the way *I* like. & I like it to look modern, clean lines, etc.

Am I crazy here?

[Nanette56]

Nope, not crazy. I spent hours last night looking on Google for nursery ideas and was truly disappointed with what I saw All blue or All pink, frilly or themed . Just not my style at all! I finally found one I kinda liked, it was a pastel apple green color, with kinda modernish white ikea looking furniture. It didn't look too adult, I can add some cute accents without making it look too cutesy. I'm not really into decorating, and I know we're going to have to re-arrange the house once they get older anyway, they're definitely not going to want to share a room. And it's MUCH more fun IMHO to decorate a room with the children's input!  Their older brother has his own room which we actually just made over for him this past Christmas with all the stuff he actually likes, and could give input on(it was his surprise Christmas present) he slept in our room for a month while we worked on it:

It was fun, it was easy, it was cheap, and because we kept it simple when he was a baby, we didn't have much to change. If you come up with any ideas, lemme know! I just cleaned the nursery out, and all I have is crisp white walls so far!

[MaerynPearl]

You are completely right and so is she.

But you dont NEED bright pink to be cheerful. I have seen some BEAUTIFUL nurseries that were based on browns and oranges with geometric patterns (after all the tiniest babies love those sharp edges... and the older kids are learning about those shapes in school, it grows with them!)

Its fine to have an "adult style" room for the kid... their room does not define them and when they get older, as you said, you can always change it to suit her.

Personally, if I had a nursery to design for little miss Mae (as she is cosleeping, her "nursery" is our bedroom. When she is older and sleeping on her own she will share her sisters room) I wanted to design it after the song "Strawberry Fields Forever" by the Beatles. Lots of strawberry red and leafy green, no pink.

Funny that I wanted to do that and the poor girl has a strawberry birthmark now.... guess theres something about her and strawberries?

Google "Nursery Design" and go into images. There are some based on bright orange... some very colorful... yes a lot of baby blue/baby pink BUT I do not think they look as good as the ones based on the brighter colors. Most of them with non-traditional colors look like they would be an awesome room for a teenager to live in too.

[annablue]

I don't want a girly, "babyish" nursery, either. I have white furniture, but the other colors/decor are pretty standard and not technically designed for a nursery.

Edited by annablue - 11/15/10 at 4:05pm

[texmati]

You might try looking at odeedoh for nursery ideas. That being said, our nursery is exclusively used for dh and I to 'hang out' in, since we cosleep. I'm so glad we didn't go with a baby theme!

[roslyn]

I want a more sophisticated look as well. For instance I really want a glider this time, but all the ones in my price range are simply not that attractive to me. I like a more modern look. Unfortunately, modern=big bucks. I made everything for my last one and probably will for this one as well. Since it will also be the guest bedroom a "babyish" look is definitely out. 

[gumshoegirl007]

I hate the baby, animal, disney character, etc themed room.  I'm just not so into cutesy.  So instead, we're going modern.  Hopefully we're picking up the crib and dresser tonight (we're buying used and paying less than 1/2 of what we would have for the same piece in the store!!!)  I love this room that showed up on OhDeeDoh today and I have a tonne more booked in Evernote for design ideas.  I want cozy, comfortable, refreshing.  But, I also want this room to take our daughter through to tween-dom.  So, no, you're not alone.  I think an Asian themed room could be phenomenal.  I bet Etsy has some great cherry blossom ideas.

[MoonStarFalling]

My kids (3, 8 and expecting) all have simple modern rooms.  No bright colors just relaxing colors.  

[Lyndzies]

We didn't want a frilly pink nursery for our baby girl, so like Mae suggested, we decided to go with oranges, chocolates, and greens for our color scheme.  The window blinds are about as "frilly" as I got when designing. 

Most of the projects were DIY, so it wasn't even an enormous expense (although we did splurge on the designer wallpaper and getting carpet installed).  I agree about furniture and such being able to be used for a long time, and that it's great when kids can grow into their rooms... so we got a convertible crib and made sure our nursery not only read as a baby's room, but would also be totally appropriate for a little girl (and maybe even a tween?) as she gets older.  Either way, with all the work we put into it, she's not allowed to redecorate till she's thirteen.  Lol!

Here are two shots, and you can see more pics (plus "before" shots) and read about the projects on my blog.

I second the suggestion of checking out the nurseries on ohdeedoh.com. 

Good luck!

Edited by Lyndzies - 11/11/10 at 5:12pm

[Nanette56]

Originally Posted by Lyndzies 

We didn't want a frilly pink nursery for our baby girl, so like Mae suggested, we decided to go with oranges, chocolates, and greens for our color scheme.  The window blinds are about as "frilly" as I got when designing. 

Dude I am still so jealous of your nursery!!! Thanks for the website link to ohdeehdoh- they have some fabulous ideas. I wish I was 1/2 as creative . I stopped at home depot after lunch and picked up a few paint samples to try some stuff out. I love seeing pics of everyone's nurseries. It's inspiring

[tzs]

lyndzies:

is that a glider? how do you like it if it is? give us the info!

i want a glider for #2 but there's very little between traditional glider and modern-expensive. i've seen the gliders that look like armchairs but wasn;t sure if they glided as well. 

[Ola_]

I completely agree with you and I think the items you're describing sound lovely.  I found some good inspiration photos on apartmenttherapy.com (which I just realized becomes the site posted above when you go to the Children's section, doh!).  They have some neat stuff on there in all kinds of styles.

Oh and Lyndzies I love that room!  I may have to steal some ideas from your blog.

[karanyavel]

What's a nursery?

For that matter, what's decorating?

Sorry, couldn't resist. I'd post a picture of my bump's nursery, but it's just a cloth pee pad thingie ready to toss on what will be his portion of our bed (protection against leaky diapers and leaky boobs) and a single drawer in our bedroom I cleared out for baby stuff. Oh, and I bought new black sheets to hide any poop-blowout stains that won't come out in the wash.

But then my 6 y/o still sleeps in the master bedroom (in her own bed now, usually) and our pillowcases don't even match each other. The other day my husband and I decided to pick up some bath towels the other day -- at Wal-Mart, haha -- and it went something like this:

Me: "Oooh, they come in so many colors!"

*Everyone proceeds to pick out a couple of towels*. We bought six new towels for our two bathrooms: lavender, purple, maroon, bright red, navy blue and green!

Hey, it goes well with the rest of our mix 'n' match home, which is very colorful yet contains exactly *one* purely decorative item -- a 10" painting my daughter bought to hang on the wall above her computer desk. The walls are otherwise bare and there are no knick-knacks allowed in the house. If it's not useful, it's not allowed in unless someone has taken responsibility for its care and that someone sure ain't gonna be me. Photos go on the computer preferably, but I keep a box in a closet with some pre-digital ones.

Yep, I'm hopeless. Even my brother has a more decorated house than me -- he has a gun rack in his living room, whereas I'd probably just stuff the guns in some ugly locked cabinet.

On a serious note, we live this way on purpose. But I have to say the rooms posted above look really great! ... and I'm mildly embarrassed to admit I didn't realize that "real people" (not TV people or the uber-rich) actually have nurseries for their babies. In my 32 years, this is the first time it actually clicked in my head that nurseries are REAL rooms that regular people have. Cue Keanu Reeves: "Whoa..."

Sorry for the ramble.

And to the OP -- if I *were* going to have a nursery, I'd personally go with the kind you're talking about. I don't like to influence my kids towards being girly/boy-y/kidsy/whatever. I'd rather let the child determine the decor of his/her space once he/she is old enough to pick things out him/herself.

--K

[SilverFish]

hahahah. i was GOING to decorate our 2nd bedroom for the "baby" and then she showed up 5 weeks early. considering i'd only just finished painting our bedroom a week prior, i'm not sure it would have happened even if she were two weeks late! in any case, i live in a two bedroom apartment with a husband with an affinity for LARGE desks and multiple computers. so the 2nd bedroom is 3/4s his office and 1/4 her bedroom. there's a crib in there (the cheapest one from ikea) and a nice dresser than was in as-is. i finally got the walls painted too! it's very slowly starting to look like a little person spends some time in there... i've gotten some frames up, changed the curtains, put a rug down. none of it is "nursery" though, just my natural style. maybe when we move to a place with 3 bedrooms she'll get her own decorated room... still won't be a frilly pink nursery though!

[MegBoz]

Actually the items I'm vacillating over are actually, truly, NECESSARY items! The room gets a lot of sun & while I have miniblinds, they really don't do an adequate job - so I want curtains up to darken the room. (OK, she'd probably sleep alright without a very dark room, but I think it really helps & I appreciate difference. It will also be nice for guests - because it's going to double as a guest room for a while.)

I have TONS & tons of clothes - lots of hand-me-downs from both my brother & sister's sons, plus clothes I got as gifts for DS, plus a few things I HAD to buy for DS. So I need a dresser because it's driving me crazy to have them in bags & boxes! I want them *organized* so I can access what I need.

DD will actually sleep in a basinette in my room at least the first 4 mos - until she outgrows that basinnet, but I need a place for all those clothes. I'm not opposed to co-sleeping, but DS preferred sleeping independently. Considering even DH & I prefer our own, solitary, sleep space, I'm expecting independent sleep to be preferable. Even if we co-sleep a while, eventually she'll need her own space, so I'd like to get it all set up.

[~Adorkable~]

Since we having B/G twins it helps curb any tendency to go pink or blue, which I didn't want anyway. We lean towards very mod clean lines and have recently picked a very bold deap warm yellow nearly saffron shade to do the room in and will go from there.

I figure I will redecorate every few years as the kids grow and exspess their interests and so this first ones the one that is mostly for me. I just wanted the right moods for them and i think the color does that, the details will probably never be noticed by babies.

As for thinking as some have mentioned that they kid will keep the stuff thru growing up....? I'm hard pressed to think of a kid i know that doesn't want to change their room around a lot. So if you want to keep the furniture, I would work to make it very flexible stuff style wise, so that just repainting walls and adding details can still have a big impact on a room later when they ask for it.

Cheery never has to be fluffy or nursery like. The idea for my yellow actually came from a Tibetan yellow that a friend of mine painted his two body piercing shop in! They have a invigorating and calming effect in a way I have never seen another color have, vie known for years I wanted to life nearer to that color!

[Llyra]

Eh...  Babies need a warm, loving family and consistent, attuned care.  They need the opportunity to explore the world.  They need a reasonably safe environment.  They couldn't possibly care less what the interior decorating looks like--- seriously.   "Cheerful" is something adults want, for babies-- babies really don't care.
 

I had a nursery for my first DD1.  She hardly even went in it-- she wanted to be where I was.  The only use it got was as a nice place to store all the baby crap people bought for us, and a nice place to keep the crib, which was mostly used as a giant laundry basket, or as a cat bed.  Her favorite piece of interior decorating was a big black and silver Celtic knotwork tapestry I had in my family room-- it was very high-contrast and intricate, and she loved to stare at it as a young infant.  All she really needed, in terms of "furniture," was a thick blanket to lie on, on the floor-- with a few extras, for when her digestive system "overflowed" and we needed to do laundry. 

Even when she was a toddler, she would go in her room to get the stuff she wanted to play with, and carry it in to where I was.  She never remarked on the wall decorations, never seemed to notice the curtains I'd made, and had no appreciation whatsoever for the nifty matching laundry hamper. 

I say if you decide you want a nursery, don't go nuts on the decorating-- baby won't care what it looks like, and will vastly prefer being with you anyway.   You might find you put in all that effort and money to no purpose.  And certainly if you do decide to decorate a nursery, decorate it the way you like it.  Again, baby won't care whether there's paneling on the walls, or balloons, or mud and straw.  

[Lyndzies]

Ola_ - Thanks!  And please, steal away!!  (I updated the link I posted so that it goes directly to the "nursery reveal" post.

MegBoz - I am so with you on needing space for all her clothes and such (pretty much ALL gifts and/or hand-me-downs, but there's a TON!) and for her to be when she's ready to stop co-sleeping with us... and us with her.  Right now, it's totally fine and working great (DD is 4 weeks) but eventually, she is going to sleep in her own room.  Of that I am certain.  This is not to say I'm not very AP-minded, just that we plan to transition her to her own sleeping space in a few months, when she's ready.

Nanette - Yay for paint samples!  I am a paint chip whore; you should see my one drawer in my living room.  I swear, I am a hoarder of paint samples.  Hehehe...

tzs - Yep, it's a glider!  AND a recliner!  It was a little pricey, but we wanted something that either would a) be appropriate to stay in DDs room as her own reading chair, etc as she got older or b) appropriate to move to another space in our house once I stopped nursing DD in it, etc.  AND I hate the look of "traditional" gliders.  Anyway, the manufacturer is Best Chairs, and we picked it up at a Buy Buy Baby w/ a 20% off coupon.  I'll admit it was a bit pricey, but no more so than a traditional armchair you'd get for another living space in the house, and we figured it was worth it because we think it'll have some longevity in our home. 

To those that don't understand/want/have nurseries for their LOs - totally get it that having a dedicated space all decorated up for their LO is not for everyone, nor is it in everyone's budget... BUT, we have a 4 BR home with only us and the LO; one room is our master, another is an office, and a third is a guestroom/workout space... we think our babe is blessed that we have the ability to give her and her things a dedicated space, when she's ready to have her own space.  As far as decorating goes, if you have the means and the will (and, in my case, if decorating and DIY projects are sortof a "hobby") having a baby is the perfect excuse to get you creative juices flowing and really throw yourself into a fun project... a project that helps those 10 months fly by! 

Yes, I understand and agree that the baby probably won't care a whole ton, especially at first (although DD LOVES to stare at the wallpaper design when she's on the changing table) and will also prefer being with a parent than alone in her room.  But, in my case, I LOVE being in the gorgeous space I created for Cadence... hell, I slept in that recliner for the last two months of my pregnancy!  So I'll have no problem making a whole bunch of the time we spend together happen in that warm, beautiful room.  Hopefully she won't, either.  Certainly no way I'm going to feel that my time, money, or effort was "wasted" on lovingly putting together the most welcoming space I could for my baby girl.  At the very least, if we find we have to move in a few years (which we may) it'll be a great selling point for a young couple.  As well as when we have our house re-appraised in about a year. 

Anyway, the OP seemed to want ideas for how she could have a uniquely decorated nursery, that was more modern and that she'd enjoy while her LO was tiny (and that maybe LO could grow into) not the reasons she doesn't need one at all.  I think she's getting a lot of great tips!! 

[BetsyS]

My first nursery was really sweet.  Green and off white toile, bumper pads made out of minky, dark cherry furniture, and a cool tapestry.  Sweet.  I used it through my frist 2 children.

Then, we moved, and circumstances changed.   Now, #3 shares a room with the #1 boy (he sleeps sounder than #2 so night-wakings don't bother him).  So, my nursery is much brighter and more colorful, in mind that he's sharing with a 4 year old.  

I liked both of them, for different seasons of my life.  I say decorate how you like, throw out the rules, and absolutely no frilly pink until you have to! 

[Knitting Mama]

Even though we knew that we would be bedsharing for an indefinite length of time, we still had fun setting up a nursery, I guess for the experience of it. We installed wainscoting and chair rail, and painted them cream colored. We painted the wall above the wainscoting sage green. Our furniture is maple toned, and while there is a crib, it's used for storage only at this point. The biggest things the room is used for is clothes storing, Cecilia's swing and diaper storage/diaper changing.