Nursery reveal: a modern, colourful baby girl's room

AD | This post features products kindly gifted by Murals Wallpaper, Frenchic and Pretty Pegs and includes some affiliate links. As always, all opinions are my own.

Almost as soon as we found out we were expecting, nursery design ideas started whirling around in my head. Because really, what could be more fun than designing a baby’s room.

I knew I wanted it to be colourful and fresh, and as I’m still on a buy-less-stuff mission (whoa, turns out having a baby is expensive), I wanted to make do with some things we already had kicking around the house:

• This little vintage chest of drawers, perfect for a changing table, that’s in really good nick structurally but needed some TLC in the finish department.

• The small vintage 40’s wardrobe that used to live in our master bedroom alcove – a Gumtree buy from years ago that’s still one of my favourite second-hand furniture purchases ever.

• Glass ceiling light shades from the Made.com Ilaria range, which I bought a few years ago to use in here when it was my dressing room.

• The existing window dressings – long linen curtains from Ikea and a simple sheer roller blind from Blinds2Go. These are the Ikea AINA curtains, but from back in the good old days when Ikea offered 300cm curtain lengths, much to the delight of budget conscious, high-ceilinged house owners everywhere. Maybe we should start a petition to bring the long lengths back…who’s with me?

• Black round mirror on faux-leather strap from Maisons du Monde. I originally bought this to sit above my dressing table, but two in a row arrived smashed into shards. I saved the frames and had new glass cut at our local glazing shop…and now I have three. But they’re classic and work well anywhere, so hey.

ILARIA PENDANT LIGHT SHADES IN DUSKY OLIVE, BERRY AND CHAMPAGNE, MADE.COM | BRYCE ROCKING CHAIR, ROSELAND FURNITURE | wall shelves, clas ohlson | Rocco Flags Rug, green, Asiatic Carpets at Next [affiliate link] | AINA LINEN CURTAINS, DARK GREY, IKEA |

Wallpaper goals

I also knew from the start that baby’s room was going to be my first foray into wallpaper. If you’ve seen my house you’ll know I usually prefer to use pattern in small doses, but I do think there are two rooms where even the most minimalistic among us can never go wrong with a bit of wallpaper - tiny loos and tiny-people’s bedrooms.

But I had a long search for the nursery wallpaper of dreams, as not only did it need to be amazing (obviously), it had to coordinate well with the dusky olive, blush and champagne tones of the pendant shades, the slightly orangey floorboards and the charcoal curtains. And I didn’t want anything too busy, traditional, dark or animal-themed. Which all together is a pretty big ask.

But when I spotted the Matisse-inspired Cutout Pastel design from Murals Wallpaper, I may have shed a tear of wallcovering induced joy. This was THE ONE. Modern, fun, not too overtly girly, and stylish as all get’up.

The only hitch was that somehow, despite the extensive renovation and DIY work we’ve done on the house over the years, Husby and I were both wallpapering virgins. So the fact that Murals Wallpaper products are, as the name suggests, murals printed to your measurements rather than regular wallpaper rolls was pretty appealing. No calculations required to work out how many rolls you need, no checking batch numbers, and no over-ordering to make sure you have enough. Simples.

After sending over the wall dimensions, I received a digital proof to help me visualise how the full design would look in the space and to make sure I was happy with the positioning of the mural on the wall. And off to print it went. Within 3 days it had been dispatched and it arrived not long after.

Unlike standard wallpaper rolls, Murals wallpapers come in a single continuous roll - including a handy installation guide at the top - with each individual drop numbered and separated by a dotted cutting line.

The murals are printed 1-2% larger than your dimensions so you’ll have plenty of excess paper for trimming and to allow for slightly (or in our case, ridiculously) wonky old walls. We laid the numbered strips on the floor in order, used a spirit level to carefully draw a plumb line on the wall, and away we went. Paste the wall, hang the drop, paste the wall, line up the next drop. And repeat.

I have to admit I’m really pleased with the results of our first wallpapering endeavour but then there’s not much call for smugness when they’ve made it this simple.

But now I have a confession to make to the talented designer of this very beautiful wallpaper…

Because there’s a doorway on the main wall that we papered, we had an excess of almost two full drops when we’d finished installing the mural. It would be bordering on illegal to let it go to waste (I mean…look at it), so I put my contemplation face on and went to work figuring out what to do with the leftovers.

Soft toy, H&M Home [affiliate link]

The chimney breast was looking rather, well, white. And if I made just a few…ahem, minor alterations….it would leave me enough spare paper to create a pattern above the fireplace that looked both intentional and hopefully not too much less amazing that the original pattern, in all its glory, as the designer intended it.

So I absolutely butchered the excess wallpaper strips, totally bastardising the original design in the process. Cutting out and chopping up the individual shapes to give me enough of each colour to fill the space, I pasted them individually on the white-painted chimney breast wall.

Dear wallpaper designer: I’m very sorry, please don’t hate me…but it does look pretty good, right?

Vintage chest of drawers painted in Wise Old Sage, Frenchic Paint Al Fresco Range [affiliate link] | Reva Changing basket, Olli Ella at Kidly

Upcycled changing table

This little chest of drawers was an Ebay find I bought a few years ago for our guest bedroom. When we collected it the sellers mentioned they’d been using it as a changing table, so I always figured one day it might serve that purpose for us too.

It’s beautifully made, structurally sound and apart from some minor flaws in the finish, was in really great condition. Ripe for upcycling and, hopefully, a bargain buy that our little girl can use for years even as her needs and her bedroom change.

I chose Frenchic ‘Al Fresco’ paint [affiliate link] in this lovely pale green shade, Wise Old Sage.

The genius of Frenchic paints is that there’s very little prep required. But because the finish on this piece was quite glossy (and will need to withstand constant use by a wriggly, leaky, barfy baby), after removing the hardware I did give it a quick all-over light sanding just to be on the safe side, followed by a good vac and a dust over with a damp cloth.

the VINTAGE chest of drawers before painting WITH FRENCHIC

A lot of experienced furniture upcyclers recommend sugar soap as a first step, for removing grease and grime to ensure good paint adhesion. But I didn’t have any of that, so I used plain old soapy water and a cloth, rinsing well afterwards with a clean damp cloth and letting it dry thoroughly.

I could have used a small roller for all of the flat surfaces to avoid brushstrokes, but one of the things I love about Frenchic paints, especially the Al Fresco range, is that it’s remarkably self-levelling which reduces brushstrokes and gives a really lovely, even surface.

Actually designed for garden furniture, it’s a durable, weatherproof chalk paint perfect for outdoor use, but because it’s also really low in VOCs it’s perfectly safe for indoor use too. Self-sealing, it doesn’t even need a wax coat on top - how easy is that.

picture frame and plant pot painted in frenchic dusky blush and wise old sage, both from the al fresco range, frenchic paint [affiliate link]

I’ve painted a fair few pieces of furniture with different brands of chalk paint over the years, and Frenchic is the best by a mile in terms of ease of use/general lack of faff involved and the quality of the finish. So far I’ve used it on plant pots (indoor and out, bare terracotta and glazed), plastic, wood and rattan and it has worked a treat on them all.

I used it to spruce up some accessories for the nursery too - the plant pot above was painted in the same shade as the changing table, the pink photo frame in Dusky Blush (also from the Al Fresco range), and two old wicker baskets painted in Dusky Blush and Hot as Mustard (Frenchic Lazy Range).

OLD WICKER HAMPERS PAINTED IN DUSKY BLUSH AND HOT AS MUSTARD, FRENCHIC PAINTS [AFFILIATE LINK] | WOODEN WALL HOOKS, PRETTY PEGS

Wall storage

Now for question time - does anyone else have an intense fear of hanging anything on and/or making holes in a freshly papered wall?

So far I’ve left the wall bare, partly because 1) the wallpaper speaks for itself, but mainly because 2) there’s no turning back once the holes have been made and that’s a level of commitment I’m not quite ready for just yet. You know, given that the babe hasn’t even been birthed yet and as a first time parent I have absolutely no clue what changes we’ll decide to make in here when the practicalities of caring for an actual mini human become apparent.

So I figure I’ll wait it out and if there’s something that would be really useful to have hanging on the wall - say, some storage above the changing table - I’ll revisit down the line.

In the meantime, I added these super fun wall hooks from Pretty Pegs on the adjacent wall for hanging all those tiny, adorable baby bits I know I won’t be able to resist buying for our new little nugget.

Not only are the hooks available in the perfect colour palette for this wallpaper, they come in loads of really fun shapes and sizes and are a doddle to install too.

Pretty Pegs are probably best known for supplying stylish legs and self-adhesive covers that let you indivisualise and upcycle Ikea furniture, and if you go back a bit on my blog you’ll see I used a set of their sexy legs in a previous dressing table project. So when they got in touch a while back to announce the launch of their new wall hook range, I was chomping at the bit to find the perfect spot in my home for a set. And here they are (swoooon).

These can also be used as furniture knobs and come in pretty wood finishes as well as black, so if you’re after a less fairycake sprinkles/more sophisticated look they can hook you up with that too. Well I had to get a pun in here somewhere, didn’t I…

So what do you think? Any nursery-buying top tips from those more experienced in baby-land?