With his first nieces on the way, long-standing COAT pal Luke Arthur Wells has put his love of neutrals to work for nursuries. 

A great challenge for producing the now much-coveted gender-neutral colour scheme, stick with us, and we'll show you some real beaut options for your newborns.👶

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The problem with the idea of gender neutral nurseries is that it still hangs on this idea that blue is for boys, pink is for girls - just also suggesting that anything in between is suitable for both.

It’s easy to overthink this sort of thing when it comes to designing a room for a new baby, when really what you should be focused on is just creating a room filled with things you love in colours that make you happy.

For the people in my family that just happens to be beautiful neutral shades, fortunately for me, as that’s what I love too, and I’ve really enjoyed helping them design nurseries for my first nieces. 

However, while a relaxing nursery space with neutrals is of course a good idea, it’s also supposed to be a room that feels joyful. So how do you create a neutral nursery that’s still a fun and stimulating space for baby (and you) to spend time in with a limited colour palette? 

Here are my top tips:

Get the Base Shades Right

The neutrals you choose have a huge bearing on the feel of your room, and while you might like colder greys, whites and even blues in other rooms in your house, I’m all for adding something with a bit of warmth and life for a nursery. A warmer white, for example, with undertones of yellow, orange or red, feels more the right atmosphere for a nursery than the crispness of a cool-tinted white. Warm neutrals can be both relaxing and energising, if you pick the right shade. 

Don’t forget, low VOC paint should be a priority throughout your home anyway, but nowhere is it more important than in a nursery. 

Need to figure out your light situ? Good job our Peel and Stick Swatches move around with no mess and no fuss 😉. Play with one.

Pick a Point of Inspiration to Narrow Down Your Scheme 

The world of children’s interiors is a pretty exciting place. There’s so much to choose from, all featuring cute, characterful designs that give you the opportunity to really have fun designing the space. However, it can get a little bit out of hand if you don’t have a plan in place. Before you know it you’ve got cuddly bunny rabbits next to spacemen, elephant print wallpaper with octopus wall art. Not great in terms of cohesiveness. 

Choosing, for example, a setting or colour story for the dressing elements of the room can be really helpful in pulling a scheme together. In this nursery, I used a starting point of a cute rocking woolly mammoth which mum and dad both loved.

Not only did this give me a colour palette starting point (Coat’s Sunday Soul was a perfect colour match for the panelling), but this gave the start of a story for the room. I added in a few smaller prehistoric dinosaur accessories, but not too many to make it too theme-y, and then used clouds and rainbows to keep the ideas in the room limited to a few motifs. 

Heard enough? Grab a swatch.

Create a Room That Will Grow With Them 

As you might of guessed, even as a kid I was obsessed with re-decorating - I’m sure my mum got tired of my constant room makeovers. However, I also hate waste, and designing a room with the right main elements that can be adapted to different schemes in the future is important. Over choosing something like a wallpaper, which once you’ve had enough of it is a pain to remove, I love the idea of a simple one panel wall in a nursery - it’s my go-to for these spaces.

It’s a smart idea because it means you can keep the rest of the walls white, while everytime you want to change the scheme, you only need to paint the panelling and give the white a refresh for a whole new look. This sort of idea is ageless too, depending on the dressings around it. 

Furniture wise, this is something to consider too. While convertible furniture for babies is popular, there’s alway a market to sell on furniture when they out-age it, so rather choose the pieces you such as a crib and changing table, with picks for other furniture that are more adaptable, like armchairs and wardrobes. 

Convinced? Us too. Get your Swatches now.