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Modern Neutral Nursery for Ramona

This article shares a tour of our modern neutral nursery, including ideas for gender-neutral nursery themes and decorating ideas.

Ramona’s modern neutral nursery

Hi all! Yes, you read the title correctly. I went and had a baby. We welcomed our daughter, Ramona, to the world a few days ago. She surprised us by coming at 37 weeks but was still a healthy 7 lbs, 14 oz and 21 inches long. With a full head of dark hair!

We’re busy learning about how to take care of a baby, so don’t worry, I did this whole article (minus this bit up here) before she came. 🙂 Although I’m not taking the blog out of retirement just yet, I am coming out of hiding for a few minutes today to share her modern neutral nursery with you. I’m just too happy with it how it turned out.

tiny baby
Modern Neutral Nursery

Who else is happy with it? These two, who have been using all of the baby stuff as their napping spots for the last few months. Hence why I had to cover everything with blankets so they wouldn’t get cat hair caked on everything.

kitty
kitty

Now that baby is home, they are spending significantly less time in the nursery (or on this floor of the house, ha). They aren’t huge fans of the noises she makes, but they’ve been adjusting well. And without further ado, let’s talk about this nursery. We’ll start on the left side of the room and work our way around. That means we’ll hit the closet first.

Closet area

She has a pretty big closet in her room. There’s tons of storage space on either side of what you see here. We actually have our fake Christmas tree stored on the right side. However, the space wasn’t maximized with one shelf and one bar for hanging things, to we put in a wire ClosetMaid kit from Home Depot that provided a ton of extra storage. Perfect for smaller hanging items, too.

We’ve got a ton stored in here. Extra diaper pail bags and wipes, the Boppy newborn lounger, the Skip Hop Duo gray diaper bag, our Ergobaby 360, and baskets of blankets and miscellaneous toys. (The aden + anais lovestruck swaddles are so freaking cute.)

We used cheap hangers from Amazon for hanging. I’d say about 60% of the clothes you see here are from yard sales. Another 30% we got as gifts, and then the remaining 10% I caved and bought new, which I said I wouldn’t do for newborn to six month stuff, which is the size range for everything here. 🙂

Baby clothes hanging in an organized closet
Baby clothes hanging in an organized closet

Ikea Hemnes nightstand area

To the right of the closet is Ikea Hemnes nightstand in White Stain, which I put the little bear sound machine/nightlight and humidifier on. I asked around a lot for humidifier recommendations, and most people said “all humidifiers suck and are hard to clean,” so I just went with one that had decent reviews.

I will say—this one looks really nice in addition to having great reviews. Let’s hope it holds up. (I originally got this one, but then I got really sick while pregnant and started using it in our room!)

You’ll also see the baby monitor mounted to the wall. This was another thing I asked around about, and I had a hard time finding a monitor that was reasonably priced but had great reviews. We settled on this one, the Summer Infant Digital Color Video Monitor.

It has a little unit you can carry around the house, and the picture and sound quality are definitely good. Based on the testing we’ve done, I’d recommend it as a reasonably priced video monitor. I ordered sticky cable control clips to secure the monitor cord.

modern neutral nursery
modern gender-neutral nursery

Also in this little corner:

  • Owl art, I used this tapestry (affiliate link) and stapled it around an old canvas…this is an old project that I moved from elsewhere in the house. I just love this guy!
  • Golden pothos plant in an Ikea Druvflader hanging pot. You can’t beat this guy at 8 bucks. I did extend it a bit using some wooden beads and string so it hung at a more appropriate length.
  • Little deer picture that I printed from a free stock photo website.
  • Two stunningly beautiful handmade blankets draped over the side of the crib. The pink, white, and gray one was made by my grandma, and the black and white one was made by my coworker. They are two of my absolute favorite gifts that we got…so soft, and most importantly, so much love went into both of them. 🙂

Our modern neutral nursery’s gray crib

And this is my favorite view of the room. I wanted a simple crib that did not transition into a toddler bed (I figure we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it). I thought about the Ikea Gulliver crib but really wanted a gray one…the Babyletto Hudson crib is beautiful, but again, was a convertible crib and was pricey.

Since I was NOT about to be painting a bunch of annoying little spindles while pregnant and barfing 24/7 and didn’t want to spend $350+, I decided a this Viv + Rae Crib. It was originally $260, but I think we got it for about $150. (It’s now on a closeout sale for under $100 if you can snag it.) The perfect crib for a modern gender-neutral nursery.

I went to old trusty target for the swiss cross crib sheet and snagged the Sealy foam-core mattress and additional waterproof cover from Amazon. The rug in front of the crib is older, purchased from Homegoods a few years ago and relocated from elsewhere in the house.

modern gender-neutral nursery

To the right of the crib…

To the right of the crib, I relocated a snake plant from elsewhere in the house. It’s planted in a construction bucket from Home Depot, which fit perfect into the basket from Homegoods (also purchased a few years ago). I also threw the Dekor Diaper Pail here because it’s right next to the dresser/changing pad.

Btw, I only decided on the Dekor over the Diaper Genie because it was a little cheaper and seemed to have comparable—if not better—reviews. I hung a DIY mobile in this corner as well. It’s made out of an embroidery hoop, painted wooden stars and beads, clear jewelry string, and glue. Sorry, no tutorial. But isn’t it cute? 🙂

modern gender-neutral nursery
handmade nursery mobile

Ikea Hemnes nursery dresser & changing area

Here’s a view of the whole corner—you can see the Ikea Hemnes Dresser in White Stain we decided on as a combo dresser/changing table. We also threw a bunch of Ikea Skubb drawer organizers into the dresser to help corral smaller items (more pics below).

Though I did opt for the smaller Hemnes dresser since the room is smaller and has a weird layout with all the windows and door. For the changing pad, we used an ultra-affordable option with a cute Cloud Island Plush Scallop cover. We used some sticky fasteners to secure it in place on top of the dresser.

modern gender-neutral nursery

Here are a few shots of the organizers in the drawers. We have Skubb organizers in the top drawer and some other Ikea drawer organizers that I can’t for the life of me find a link to in the middle drawer. As for the organization—I’m sure that will change (and get less organized).

But I went ahead and put spare onesies, wipes, waterproof changing pad liners, and diaper creams/other health-related items up here. We received a few other brands of wipes at our shower, but we plan to use the Amazon subscription service for their Elements line sensitive wipes (if they work out well for baby). You can’t beat the price and convenience.

The middle drawer has tons of swag: burp clothes I made to use up a bunch of fabric scraps, bibs, hats, socks, mittens, pants, teethers, pacifiers, etc. I also got some cloth diaper inserts from Jo-Ann to use as rags even though we’re not cloth diapering.

nursery drawer organization
nursery drawer organization
A Modern and Neutral Nursery

Poang rocker and reading area

And then last but not least, we have this little corner, which has the rocker and book shelving. I’m a little embarrassed about how much I stressed out about a rocker. Lots of people told me that we absolutely had to have a comfy rocker/glider…that it was totally essential to my sanity.

Ultimately, the space constraints helped me make my decision on the Ikea Poang Armchair in birch veneer with a Finnsta gray cushion. Gliders are HUGE, and we just didn’t really have the space for one without things getting really cramped. After we visited an Ikea and sat in the two Poang models (the armchair and the rocker), we both decided the armchair was best.

The Poang rocker itself is very comfy, especially with the headrest, but I’ve read online that having a Boppy or other type of pillow helps when holding a baby in the Poang, so that’s where I threw our Boppy.

Perfect fit for a modern gender-neutral nursery. In this shot, I also have a DIY play mat draped over Poang chair—I made it by sandwiching a piece of very thick batting between decorative fabric and fleece fabric.

For the bookshelves, we used Ikea Mosslanda picture frame ledges. They come in a few different lengths, so I decided to get a few and arrange them with an Ikea Ribba frame that I put a free geometric cat printable in (get it here). The plants on here are also from Ikea and are fake.

Ikea Poang in a nursery
Nursery bookshelves

Miscellaneous nursery stuff

And just a few other miscellaneous notes about the space: we currently have the Auto Rock n Play we got stored in here, but we’ll probably move that to our room or the living room. Several trusted sources have described this as an absolute must-have item.

As for the windows, we went with Blackout Cordless Shades in White. They work very well and are very sleek. We have the light-filtering ones on some other windows in our house…the blackout ones are much more expensive, but they are worth it for baby’s room.

The best past about these shades is that they look custom but aren’t. You have them cut right to size in store.(We have the cheap blackout shades in our bedroom, and now I want to upgrade to these. They work so much better and are much less of a PITA).

I also made the curtains in the room. When I saw this fabric at Jo-Ann, I knew it was perfect! I just made a simple rod-pocket style curtain because I didn’t want to mess with anything more complicated. This was my first time making curtains from scratch. I’ll admit that it was way more time-consuming that I thought it’d be, but I am happy with the results.

handmade nursery curtains

And here’s our modern neutral nursery source list:

(Affiliate links below; which you can read more about here.)

Closet Area

Nightstand Corner

Crib Area

Dresser/Changing Table

Reading Corner

Books

Miscellaneous

  • Curtains, DIY
  • Playmat (draped over Poang chair), DIY
  • Paint colors: Behr Silver City and Dark Granite

Ramona’s modern neutral nursery update

Hey there! Ramona just recently turned 3, and I’m popping in to give an update on the room. I don’t consider it a nursery anymore…instead, it’s her big girl room! We have made some changes, obviously, but a lot of things have remained the same.

One of the things I really wanted to do when putting together her nursery was buy pieces that would transition well to a non-nursery big girl room. That meant I didn’t want a changing table. Instead, I wanted a dresser that would double as a changing table.

As for the rocker—I opted against a traditional glider with a stool. Mostly because the room is small, but also because I thought the glider wouldn’t stick around for as long as a more traditional rocker-style chair. And in general, I didn’t want the room to be too babyish so that everything would transition well as Ramona got older.

A Modern Neutral Nursery

Ikea Hemnes dresser and nightstand

A few things we’ve kept—the Ikea Hemnes dresser that we used for nursery organization, as well as the matching Hemnes nightstand. We removed the changing pad when we were no longer using it, and we actually moved the dresser into the closet to make more room for Ramona’s twin-sized bed. The nightstand is by the bed.

If you’re wondering about using the Ikea Hemnes dresser in a nursery, we loved it. The 3-drawer version was perfect for us to double as a changing table—we just attached the changing pad to the top using glue and strong hook-and-loop from 3M.

The Skubb organizers in the drawers were and still are fantastic, too. They did a great job organizing all of the small things for a baby. And by keeping them in the top drawer, they were right within reach! As a toddler, we still use them a ton to organize all of the small things that toddlers have, too.

Ikea Poang rocker for a nursery rocking chair

The Ikea Poang rocker is also still a staple. It is pretty much in the same spot it was in when the room was a nursery, and we still use it every night. The thing I love most about this piece is that we could easily move it to any other room in the house and it would fit in just fine! But I don’t see us moving it out of there anytime soon.

Pin Ramona’s Modern Neutral Nursery!

collage that says modern neutral nursery tour

collage that says modern neutral nursery tour
Brittany Goldwyn
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  1. Olga says:

    This is amazing!!! The room is beautiful while all the items are affordable! I am making notes for my triplet nursery in progress 🙂 Hope you will continue writing. Congratulations on your beautiful doughter.

  2. Julie McNeill says:

    Ramona is a lucky little girl; her room is BEAUTIFUL (almost as beautiful as her!)

  3. you know i love it- just adorable!!!!!! as is ramona! so so happy for you and can’t wait to meet her!

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