Designing Our Nursery with Serena & Lily

We're Having a Baby - The Nursery Part 2

A few weeks ago, I shared some of my initial mood boards for our daughter’s nursery. I also mentioned that we partnered with Serena & Lily to help with the planning + design of the nursery. We worked with one of their design consultants to get guidance in the planning of our nursery which was so helpful! Since this is our first baby, there were quite a few things that we hadn’t thought of that we found out are quite important when designing a nursery!

While we were excited to jump right into the interior design, the Serena & Lily design advisor advised us to first develop a functional space plan to ensure that our nursery will not only look great, but serve us well as first time parents. Her input was already paying off :) A few other tips we picked up from the experts at Serena & Lily during our first call included:

  • Invest in a good and super comfy glider – You’ll be spending a LOT of time in the nursery when your baby is a newborn and a great glider will make your life easier during feedings and nap time – for you and your baby :)
  • Get on your knees during your planning process – Your baby will become a toddler and her view of her room will be much different than yours. Getting low will help you to better anticipate how your baby will see the room, which will help you to design a safe and functional space plan.
  • When in Rome – Roman shades are recommended in nurseries instead of long drapes because the material and cords of the longer drapes can be dangerous once your little one starts walking.
  • Plan for the future – Your newborn will grow into a toddler soon, which means she’ll begin to need more room for all of her “stuff”. We originally hoped that we could also fit a guest bed in that room (for grandparents to visit since both our parents live in other states), but unfortunately with the space there just wasn’t room when we considered the storage needed as our daughter grows.

Since the Serena & Lily design advisor is located in San Francisco, we created a rough sketch of the room that will be transformed into our nursery and emailed it to them to review. After reviewing our available space, she gave us three options for functional space plans that were both safe and will give us space  for the room to grow with our daughter.

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above are some room layout options from Serena & Lily as well as some possible paint colors and rug options

Once our space plan was decided, we finally got to move onto the discussion about the theme of our nursery! I created physical idea boards to help us select the creative direction that was right for us. I think our families really liked the idea boards because they live out of state, but reviewing the idea boards (in person over the holidays) allowed them to participate in the discussion of our nursery. It turns out, grandparents-to-be are more than happy to discuss anything to do with their soon to arrive granddaughter. :)

After debating the three mood boards I originally came up with, Jason + I decided we liked option #2 the best – not too girly, but fun and something our daughter could grow into. :) I love the shades of coral with light gray and pops of gold.

Another thing the Serena & Lily design advisor mentioned that we hadn’t considered was that we would be spending a lot of time on the floor once she gets a bit bigger, so finding a great carpet was important to us since we have wood floors in her room. Serena & Lily has lots of great rug options, so we’re still debating if we go bold or a bit more subtle. I love that they offer custom gliders, we’ve already decided to go with them for our glider – and I love their Moroccan pouf so this white one is pretty perfect. Shelving is also important for us, since I know we’ll be storing lots of toys in her room. I love this Serena & Lily storage bench because it offers shelving + extra seating.

Now that we have a lot of the main pieces picked out and the overall room layout, we are working on finalizing the paint colors for the walls – along with a fun option for an accent wall I’m designing – pretty excited about that!

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Any reader of GWS knows that I love details, so you won’t be surprised to know that I want to make sure we add lots of small + fun details to our nursery – like these cute animal bookends and a touch of glam offered by this gold lamp (I love lamp)!

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After talking with the Serena & Lily design advisor about our overall look, I updated our mood board…

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links clockwise from top left: I Love You Beyond Measure Decal // wall pattern idea // tassel garland // elephant nightlight // Soho crib // Little Ozzie Rabbit // Sharon Montrose Animal Prints // Gold Lamp // White Moroccan Leather Pouf // Custom Hayes Glider // Sparkle Pillow // Land of Nod dresser // Triangles Wallpaper

So, that is where we are….who knows what it will look like by our next post! Now it’s time to work on the DIY projects, purchasing the pieces (along with some great wall art) and putting the room together! Looking forward to sharing the final design with you lovelies once we are done and hope you are enjoying seeing the process behind her room. :)

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