Before & After: This Empty Room Got a “Complete Overhaul” to Become a Colorful, Gender-Neutral Nursery
Waiting until a baby is born to learn of their gender is an exciting surprise, but it also comes with some design challenges. How do you create a gender-neutral nursery without being too, well, neutral? It turns out Tess Atkinson has some experience with this.
While Tess was pregnant, she chose not to find out her baby’s gender, but she was tasked with transforming their small guest bedroom into a nursery. And she wasn’t going to skimp on color, functionality, and good design.
“It needed a complete overhaul,” Tess says of the existing room. “There were exposed, redundant pipes, the radiator was faulty, and the house was full of clunky secondary glazing over damaged wooden sash windows. We started by restoring the windows and making them double-glazed, then got to work with the rest. The next job was leveling the floor, which was totally wonky.”
Besides the construction needs of the space, color was also a requirement for Tess. Throughout her London home, most of the walls are clad in neutrals, while the energy and pops of vibrancy come from the furniture and decor. However, in the nursery, she chose to add some fun paint to complement Farrow & Ball’s Dimity (No. 2008) on the walls.
“The room is blessed with an original wooden paneled wall on one side, and I wanted that to really stand out, so when I painted all the woodwork Farrow & Ball’s Red Earth (No. 64), I included that wall too,” Tess explains.
Once the construction, painting, and new flooring were installed (they went with a thick, cozy option), it was time to add more color to the furniture. The first purchase was a club chair from eBay, which was reupholstered with bright blue fabric and white piping. Vintage shelves were installed on the walls and decorated with her daughter’s sentimental objects and toys.
One of Tess’s daughter’s favorite activities is reading, so she made her a seating area on her treasure box, which is right next to her bookshelf so that she can curl up with a good book and read to her toys. “I love that my daughter’s toys have become part of the charm of the room,” Tess shares. “Her whales complement the undersea wall hanging above her chair, for example. My daughter loves her bookshelf and shelves at her height, and the wall where we draw on her height. She would have us measure her against it every day if she could!”