Some of my closest friends are expecting their first baby in about three weeks and several months ago, they asked if I would help them turn their guest room into a National Parks themed nursery for their son. Kaley knew she wanted a green crib and an accent wall, and that was it. So we started brainstorming this nursery makeover!
My first thought was to match the paint color to the crib since it would be place on the accent wall. Matching the wall to (some) furniture gives the room interesting texture by mixing the flat wall with the 3D planes of the furniture pieces. It can add really nice depth to a room, which was helpful since the room was going to fill up quickly with all of baby’s needs.
The crib is a beautiful forest green with natural pine spindles and the closest color match we could find was Behr’s Secluded Woods. We decided to paint the trim and doors in the color and, since they have dogs and this would be a baby-then-toddler-then-kid’s room, we went with an eggshell finish.
While searching for inspiration for things we could do to give the nursery a modern National Parks lodge feel, we kept coming across murals and they were really cool… but we were worried they’d be too busy or stimulating, especially that close to the crib. Then we came across something that really got us thinking: tone-on-tone painting.
This is a practice where you can add visual interest to the wall by painting the same color in different sheens to have a pattern appear based on lighting. (Check out Seng Nickerson’s very helpful how-to for this process here!) It seemed perfect! So I grabbed a quart of Behr’s Secluded Woods in semi-gloss and mom hopped on Google to find the perfect map inspiration.
She settled on a map of the Grand Canyon (a special place to the parents) with a twist: it was inspired by fantasy novel maps, like in Lord of the Rings. It was a cool choice Cory agreed to as well — I’m guessing watching Game of Thrones together when they were dating/engaged really inspired this choice — and I was relieved because I didn’t need a projector for the illustration-inspired map!
I got to painting and… it was on the wall. Maybe it was the wall’s heavy texture, maybe it was that the room only has north and west-facing windows, maybe it was the soft light of the ceiling fan as the only light fixture, but the wall was not poppin’ like we thought it would. See for yourself:
We decided to live with it for a week or two to see if maybe different lighting helped it take off, and to get some additional opinions from all the grandparents. Two weeks and a baby shower later, this mural was not giving. So back to the drawing board, we went into our huge stack of green Behr paint cards and picked one in a similar hue a couple shades lighter: Pine Brook.
A couple hours of tracing lines with a flashlight (not kidding) later, we have a mural that pops without being too stimulating for baby. At least we hope!
A happy accident ended up bringing about the best version of the mural. Adding in the furniture and some of the decor Kaley and Cory got really helped baby Pierce’s space come together!
Did you notice the diaper genie in the corner? That was my baby shower gift to the Jobes. I painted it to look like a tree stump — and baby Pierce will definitely keep it well fertilized!
Paint Colors Used
