Alba's Nursery - Pastels with a Monochrome Twist

To celebrate TMN's 1st birthday and our daughter Alba turning into a toddler, when she was 14 months we redecorated her nursery. We wanted to use all of the wonderful brands from the The Modern Nursery, transforming the space from a newborn's pastel nursery, injecting some fun with a monochrome twist, adding a reading area and creating a play space fit for a toddler! 

We filmed the whole thing and worked with the amazing team at The Quick Brown Foxwho made us this wonderful piece, we hope you love it as much as we do! 

This makeover was more of an update to her exisiting room which we had decorated before she arrived. The theme back then was pure pastels, Peachy Pink, White and Mint. The paint remained the same; Dulux Mango Melody 4 but as she grew older, we wanted to incorporate more monochrome to freshen up the space and add splashes of metallics to add a bit of sparkle! The monochrome added a whole new element, making it feel more modern and fun, perfect for a toddler. 

We decided to paint a White feature wall in a horizontal form across two of the four walls, filling it with our Drops Wall Stickers by french brand PÖM le bon homme. 

This gave a gorgeous and modern twist on a classic "pink room" adding a bold focus feature. We hung Olive et Oriel Prints "By Moonlight" in Grey and the "I Love You" scripted print. I love how these Prints work as a pair, and you can always swap and change, if there is a new Print we like from the store! The frames are from Moebe.

To add more fun and some much needed sparkle, we added some wall decor by our brand Lala Loves Decor, a Gold Star Mirror, "Yay" Sign, Gold Glitter eyelashes and a custom name sign directly from the brand. It is amazing what a bit of metallic does to bring a nursery space to life! 

For finer details around the cot, we hung our Three Swans Mobile by Cam Cam Copenhagen and carried on the Swan theme through into soft toys including this Swan by Nacotopocoto.

Cushions from Fine Little Day and Ko-Ko-Ko.

To the right of the cot, we made a feature on the wall with another mobile from Cam Cam, our best selling style: the Rainbow Mobile in Mint. The tone added a nice contrast against the Pink and brought other Mint details together such as the Fine Little Day Gran Cushion.

Teamed with our Styled By Naomi Wooden House Shelves, we created the perfect shelfie to display wooden toys such as our Ooh Noo Alphabet Blocks above the Mobile. The Mobile is hung on clear fishing wire - simple and very effective!

Grid Toys Storage Bag by Wildfire Teepees, Brushed Cotton Reversible Gran Blanket by Fine Little Day. Chair by Made.com

Alba loves to read so we wanted to incorporate a reading area into her nursery. We love how versatile the Picture ledges are from Ikea are, we have them all over our home and use them mainly for Prints but they also work so well as Bookshelves! We can proudly display some of her favourite books here such as Coco Chanel and One Thousand Things. Not only are they fantastic reads, but they double up as move-able art in her nursery, some of the covers are so pleasing to the eye! To see our range of contemporary Children's Books, click here.

Wildfire Teepees Playmat and Storage Bag, Cam Cam Copenhagen Dolls Bed & Bedding, Nacotopocoto Dolls, Ko-Ko-Ko Cloud cushion and Liewood Panda Storage Bag. Garland Lights by Cotton Ball Lights. Tear Drop Garland by Velveteen Babies.

On the right hand side of the nursery, we have our Ikea Hemnes Chest of Drawers which we doubled up as a changing table when Alba was a baby. I didn't want to splash out on a specific changing table as you only need them for a year, so we just added a Cam Cam Changing Mat and Musical Mobile. We removed these when Alba turned one (we now change her on the floor as she started to roll off) and can continue to use as a classic Chest Of Drawers. We customised it by adding new knobs from Anthropologie.

Above the Chest of Drawers we hung two more of my favourite Prints; Fine Little Day Pirum Parum Pear by and Olive et Oriel Panda Print. We now use the top of the Chest of Drawers to store Toys in the Mon Petit Zoréol Paper Bags.

Memory Game, Alphabet Blocks and Wooden Toy Pram by our brand Ooh Noo. Bathrobe by Liewood. Knitted doll by Lauvely. Pink Bunny by Noodoll.

Now a year on, we still LOVE this space so much! It is so versatile, and such a fun place to be. We don't have the room for a separate Playroom so we keep as many of her Toys in her nursery as possible including her Mini Be Ball Pit, and Sebra Rhino Rocker which are some her favourite large Playroom toys!

We hope you have found inspiration from this post and if there is anything you would like to know, drop us an email info@themodernnursery.com

All our love,

Laura, Alba & the TMN family 

Blog post Photography © Emily Gray Photography