Gender-Neutral & Modern Nursery Ideas

Welcome your new bundle of joy into the home with inspiring, gender-neutral nursery ideas.

Designing a modern nursery is one exciting step towards a journey of a lifetime. You want it to feel warm, inviting and stimulating, while ensuring the space meets your practical needs and grows with your child. Neutral nursery ideas tick all the boxes, especially if you’re keeping the gender of your baby a surprise!

Decorating to suit both girls and boys sets you free to think outside the box and play with colour that goes far beyond pink and blue. It’s practical and easily transformed to suit changing tastes and preferences. Perhaps best of all - if you’re planning on having more than one child - a gender-neutral nursery saves money and time, so you have more of both to enjoy those precious steps along the way.

Embrace a neutral colour palette

Choosing a neutral colour palette for your baby’s haven provides the perfect canvas to play on. A neutral base for the walls is timeless, suits both boys and girls and creates a clean backdrop for whatever you’d like to add to your design. 'Neutral' certainly doesn’t mean bland or colourless choices and a range of beautiful options ensure you’ll find the right ones for you.

Think serene shades of grey-green or the soothing tones of stones and warm sunlight. Use soft greys, beige and yellows for a peaceful atmosphere, with hues like Gentle Fawn and Polished Pebble. For a striking appeal, create a white backdrop to add black accessories and pops of bold colour too. In the reverse, gender-neutral shades like Willow Tree on the walls work wonderfully with fresh, white furniture.

Stimulate with patterns and shapes

Your baby’s senses will be captivated by patterns and shapes before you know it, which is reason enough to add them to a modern nursery. Look to the walls first, as one of the easiest ways to provide endless stimulation. Combine two or three soft pastels for vertical stripes on a feature wall, with white trim to provide balance. Paint blocks of unisex colour, like Apricot Crush, on the lower half of an otherwise neutral wall. Decorate the upper half with exciting motifs of animals, plants or shapes to match the shade and create a feeling of harmony within the design.

Play with artwork and photographs

Artwork and photographs breathe instant life and movement into a gender-neutral nursery. To avoid clutter, a pinboard brings automatic stimulation together in one place. Decorate it with a fun hodgepodge of pictures of loved ones, cute furry friends, shapes, rainbows or anything that speaks of joy to you. Paint the frames of walled pictures to highlight or contrast with your base colour palette and hang different sized frames together for a visually exciting gallery.

Choose unisex accessories

It might seem a little challenging to choose unisex baby nursery accessories, especially if you already know the gender of your child. The key is to look beyond dolls and cars, to patterns, shapes and textures to enhance the space. Patterned fabrics for cushions, rugs and bedding are great for hiding stains and adding dashes of bright colour to your design. Add texture with cosy, colourful throws, plush soft toys and natural textiles, like woven storage baskets, to stimulate the sense of touch. Cloud nursery accessories are perfect for a gender-neutral nursery, whether they’re in the form of mobiles, pictures, stencils or pillows.

Enliven with unisex lighting

A modern nursery is no place for harsh lighting and the best way to avoid turning on the overhead lights is to invest in the soft glow of lamps. For practicality, a standing lamp might offer all the light you need to work with, without being too bright. For the imagination, the options are endless. Consider table lamps that evoke fairytales, like mushrooms, castles, unicorns and owls. Light up the ceiling with revolving images of stars, moons or underwater scenes.

Create for your comfort too

Your comfort is a main priority in a modern nursery and a good way to implement unisex nursery ideas is to add your own adult flair. Yes, the design can be about you, too! Buy multipurpose furniture that fits with your own style of decor, like a chic set of drawers that doubles as a changing table. Choose a chair to sink into that provides ultimate comfort first, then dress it up with the inviting textures of throws and pillows that you love best. Modern minimalism is all the rage for good reason, so forget about fussy baby items that only add clutter. Aim for clean lines and the space that brings peace and clarity of mind.

Paint for durability

No matter which gender your child is, it’s impossible to avoid the little fingerprints and stains that inevitably decorate your walls and nursery accessories! Dulux offers the perfect solution. Dulux Easycare Washable & Tough helps you say goodbye to spills, with stain repellent technology. It turns liquid into beads that sit on the surface of the paint, so you can simply wipe it away. This way, you can go ahead and confidently adorn your walls with the design of your dreams, in the knowledge that they'll still look fabulous long past those messy years.

Gender-neutral nursery ideas, combined with a dose of practicality for your own comfort, will grow with you and your baby throughout the wonderful journey ahead.