Gender Neutral Nursery: How We Designed Evie's Room

Visual collage mock-up of a modern gender neutral nursery

Before Evie arrived, we didn’t know we were having a daughter, and honestly, even if we had, pink and florals were never going to be the automatic answer. Had she been a boy, blue and astronomy themes wouldn’t have been either. As two women who’d thought a lot about what it means to give a child space to become who they are, we’ve never loved the idea that colors and themes get assigned before a person has had a chance to show you their personality. Designing a gender neutral nursery felt less like a constraint and more like an opportunity, but it took a second to come to this realization.

I had an initial vision for the room: warm walnut furniture, colors of muted sage and dusty rose, Persian-style rugs like the ones in our dining room and halls. Gold-framed illustrations that echoed the breakfast nook. Classic Maileg stuffed animals on a shelf, kilim throw pillows. I was essentially designing another room for us, drawing on the same visual language Rachel and I had developed throughout the rest of the apartment.

neutral colored nursery from a mood board

vintage styled nursery with old style art and stuffed animals

image of vintage persian rug — Vintage Style Wool Rug

image of a gold framed illustration. ofa fox — Vintage Style Wool Rug

Breakfast nook with sage green cushions, gold framed art and a wooden shelf full of neutral colored pottery

Corner of a sunlit room with a brown leather chair, wicker basket and tall rubber tree plant

Images from my initial nursery planning vision board and images of our home

And then I imagined real toys in it: a Lovevery activity gym, a Skip Hop walker, playful stuffed animals, and books everywhere. The vintage-inspired dream didn’t break because the toys were wrong — it broke because I realized I was, in fact, designing another room for my house rather than a space for a child to grow into whoever they’re meant to be. And those are two very different things.

image of Lovevery Play Gym — Lovevery Pla y Gym

Image of Skip Hop walker toy — Lovevery Pla y Gym

There’s a version of a nursery designed entirely for the parent — a cohesive aesthetic, a controlled palette, every object chosen for how it photographs. A Pinterest dream, and I’ll be the first to say I love Pinterest. It’s beautiful but also a little sad, because children have absolutely no interest in living inside a vision board. What they want is color, texture, things to explore, and space to create and imagine.

image of a modern gender neutral nursery

The room we built for Evie is our answer to that. Designed, but not for us. Purposefully a little empty in the hopes that she fills it with her art, her interests, and her personality as she grows. A canvas for her toys, her books, her memories, and her playtime. Not a statement about who we hoped she’d be before we knew her.

The Room

Evie’s room is around 160 square feet, which we recognize is not the New York City norm. It’s a simple rectangle with a large mirrored closet on one wall and a double-sized window on the other. The window is north-facing, toward the inside of our L-shaped building, so it stays fairly quiet and has consistent soft light rather than direct sun. It also means her window looks directly into our neighbor’s apartment, which informed some of our design choices around curtains and furniture placement. There’s also no overhead lighting, just a light switch that controls an outlet on the east wall, something many New Yorkers are likely familiar with. This was the base. The blank slate from which we began.

Image of empty room with a mirrored closet, wood floors and white walls

Rendered and Photograph images of Evie’s room

The Design Choices

The Crib

The West Elm x PBK Mid-Century 4-in-1 Convertible Crib in warm walnut was the first purchase and the one I was most certain about. I had it picked out years before becoming a mother, which makes sense because it’s the piece of furniture that most resembles the rest of our apartment. I’m a sucker for walnut and mid-century design.

image of West Elm Mid-Century crib. in Walnut — West Elm x PBK Mid-Century 4-in-1 Convertible Crib

Against white walls, the solid walnut back panel reads almost like an architectural detail — not a crib against a wall but something that belongs there, that has weight and intention. In a rental where we’re limited in what we can do to the walls, the crib did the work that a paint color or wallpaper might have done elsewhere.

close up image of crib with nanit monitor and artwork

It also converts to a toddler bed, a full-sized bed, or can be used as a headboard — which matters in a city where furniture has to justify its footprint. Whether we take that path depends on things we don’t know yet: a second baby, a shared room, a different apartment. We bought optionality as much as we bought a crib.

image showing the four ways the crib can be used: crib, toddler bed, headboard or full bed.

One honest caveat: the mattress doesn’t sit as high as some other cribs in the newborn position. Lowering a sleeping baby those extra few inches at 2 am can be more challenging than it sounds. We made it work — but it’s worth knowing before you buy, especially if you’re on the shorter side.

The Mattress

And while we’re on the topic of mattresses, we have the Newton Original, chosen specifically for its breathability and washable cover. Crib mattress safety is not a place to cut corners. The comfort of knowing Evie could breathe easily if she rolled over in those early days was worth every penny of the higher price tag. And of all the places she’s slept in her 9 months of life and travel so far — hotel cribs, pack-and-plays, family members’ cribs — she’s consistently had her best sleep on her Newton.

Marketing image of Newton Crib Mattress that shows its breathable composition — Newton Original Crib Mattress

While the crib itself was gender neutral, crib sheets became one of the more enjoyable ways to bring color and personality into the space. Before she was born I bought some colorful and patterned styles from West Elm and Little Unicorn. Once we knew we had a girl I excitedly added Hello Kitty and Rifle Paper Co florals to the rotation. It’s a small thing that shifts the whole feeling of the room without touching a wall — and for a gender neutral nursery, it’s one of the easiest and most affordable ways to add personality as your child’s identity starts to emerge.

Image of Little Unicorn Dots crib sheet — Little Unicorn Crib Sheets

Image Hello Kitty crib sheet — Little Unicorn Crib Sheets

The Rug

I’m particular about rugs. Through years of decorating apartments, I’ve discovered I’m exclusively partial to wool. There’s something about the texture underfoot that feels different from cotton and synthetic materials. As someone prone to becoming overwhelmed by too many options, filtering by material was a helpful way to search through the limitless number of gender neutral nursery rugs in existence.

Cream colored rug with rainbow dots — Graduated Dot Easy Care Rug

cream colored rug with rainbow stripes — Graduated Dot Easy Care Rug

Alternative gender neutral rug options

Rugs — especially 9×12 wool rugs — are not cheap. We imagined this rug as the backdrop for many years of playtime, so we wanted something with personality that could also evolve with a child’s growing taste. Something that could hold up from the baby years through the preteen years and beyond.

The Crate & Kids Imperfect Checkerboard Wool Rug in Calm Beige arrived before anything else and immediately told us what the room wanted to be. Warm, textural, neutral in the best sense — not beige because we couldn’t decide, but beige because it was the right base for the color, patterns, and personality that would come in through objects, decor, and a future of evolving choices. Paired with the mirrored closet wall, the lighter color makes the room feel expansive and bounces light in a way that keeps the whole space bright and open.

Work-in-progress nursery with beige checkered rug and a small console table — Crate & Kids Imperfect Checkerboard Wool Rug in Calm Beige

We put a thick rug pad underneath and the result is remarkably springy. Every morning, we lie on this rug with Evie and our coffee before the day starts. It’s genuinely comfortable. Are we worried about how a light-colored rug will hold up during toddler years? Honestly, a little bit! But so far, minor accidents have cleaned up easily. Nine months in and it’s still one of our favorite things in the room.

One thing worth knowing: it sheds. Natural wool rugs shed, especially in the first year, and ours has been no exception. We knew going in and we’d still buy it again.

The Glider

The Como Nursery Glider by Monte Design retails for $1,800. We paid $100 for a Task Rabbit to pick it up from Rachel’s cousin, an interior designer with two older daughters who was ready to pass it on.

image of Como nursery rocker by Monte Design in grey with walnut base — Como Glider by Monte Design

It’s an extraordinarily comfortable chair, and its smaller footprint makes it ideal for New York City living. We paired it with the West Elm Gumdrop Ottoman and a small lumbar pillow from H&M that has been a genuine back-saver. It’s where Rachel breastfeeds almost exclusively when we’re home and where I’ve rocked Evie to sleep more nights than I can count.

Image of blue gumdrop ottoman from west elm — Gumdrop Ottoman

image of blue slub-weave pillow from H&M — Gumdrop Ottoman

It doesn’t recline. This is the one thing we’d change. The recline debate among new parents is real — and honestly worth its own post — but we land firmly on the side of wishing we had it. We didn’t choose this chair for its features though. We chose it because it was aesthetically pleasing, essentially free, and small enough to fit into the one free corner of the nursery. We’ll use it for baby two. That’s the math.

image of rocking chair in new york city nursery

The Changing Station

Some people opt for a dedicated changing table. As New Yorkers, this was another decision driven by practical space considerations. We don’t have a basement, attic, or spare room to move large pieces of furniture that have outlived their purpose, so everything needs to work long term.

We moved three months before Evie was born and used the opportunity to update our bedroom with a proper dresser set. Our older Crate & Barrel dresser moved into the nursery. It turned out to be one of the best decisions we made in this room.

The dresser height is ideal for changing without hunching, and the Keekaroo Peanut Changer on top replaces a traditional changing pad entirely — wipeable, contoured, no cover to wash. We keep one drawer stocked with backup diapers and wipes so there’s never a reason to leave Evie unattended to restock. When the diaper stage is done, the dresser stays and we’ll gain the full surface back. Furniture should work double time in a New York City apartment.

Left to right across the top: the Hatch (there is a newer version available now), positioned within easy reach for tapping through settings from the rocking chair. The Hiccapop wipe warmer and dispenser, and a silicon plate we use as a bottle/pacifier coaster to protect the wood. The Keekaroo. The Pottery Barn Kids Acrylic and Wood All-in-One Organizer holding diapers, burp cloths, pacifiers, Aquaphor, antibacterial gel, Desitin, and lotion. Everything is within one arm’s reach while the other arm holds the baby. The Dekor Eko diaper pail sits on the floor to the right.

We’ll go deeper on the full changing station setup in a future post — it’s a topic that deserves its own space.

Image of Hatch light and sound machine — Hatch

The Art

I spent a long time looking for removable wallpaper and never found anything that felt right. Eventually, I stopped searching and made a decision: embrace the white walls, call it Scandinavian influence, and let art do the work instead.

Even that was its own rabbit hole. Children’s room art has exploded as a category and choosing a direction that felt youthful without being easily outgrown took some thought.

Some Etsy Art I favorited in my early search

What helped was leaning into a parenting philosophy I feel strongly about — that children learn from the world around them, maybe even more so than when we try to teach them directly, especially in the early years. I wanted art that was also information. Animals, letters, numbers, geography, astronomy: things Evie would look at every day and absorb without realizing it.

image of Australian animals illustration that match to alphabet letters

image of Australian animals illustration that match to numbers

set of 2 Alphabet and number animal posters – etsy – CarlaEllisCreative

After our babymoon in Australia, I serendipitously stumbled across an Etsy artist, CarlaEllisCreative, who made beautiful watercolor prints of exactly that — letters and numbers illustrated with Australian animals. It felt like the perfect choice: art that brought in some pops of color and connected our current life to the life we were about to begin as parents.

Then came the world map, found on Etsy from a different artist, AbbieRenIllustration. I remember looking at the playful yet accurate design and knowing immediately it would go above the changing table. Every diaper change has been a quiet lesson about the world. We talk about all the places Mama and Mommy have been and where we’d love to explore together with Evie.

illustration of the world map for children

illustrated world map poster – Etsy – Abbierenillustration

I bought everything as prints and then bought my frames from IKEA, which remains one of the most underrated framing resources available. Three prints, three frames, under $200 total. I could write an entire post about affordable art framing — and maybe I will.

The Storage

The closet in this room is genuinely remarkable — so remarkable that we’re currently sharing half of it with winter coats, a folding bike, and gift wrapping materials. The other half is Evie’s, and it functions mostly as out-of-sight storage: outgrown clothes, Costco backup supplies, toys we rotate in and out, and Legos for when her three-year-old cousin, Sofia, visits. Everything she needs regularly is on the bookcase, in baskets, and in the dresser instead; which is intentional — as she gets older, we want her to be able to access her own things independently, and the mirrored folding doors are a recipe for a pinched finger.

image of mirrored closet reflecting nursery

For freestanding storage, I looked at traditional shelving and compared it to cubby-style systems and kept coming back to the same question: how do you create something that can display what you want seen and hide what you don’t? The Rue 27″ White Wood 8-Cube Bookcase answered that. Practical, youthful, low profile enough to fit between the crib and wall. We added bins to keeps smaller toys out of the way and still gives Evie easy access to her books.

image of cubby style bookcase in nursery

The bins were a choice to bring in color. Throughout most of our apartment, I embrace wicker or seagrass baskets, and in our closet, we keep things white and minimal with Ikea KUGGIS and STUK storage. I went to the Container Store and found Poppin Storage Bins that were a perfect fit. Rachel and I both lean toward blues and greens but I decided to add yellow and pink for good measure and variety. The Poppin bins were the first statement pops of color in the room. A stark contrast to the rest of the house, making it clear that a small human lives here.

stack of colorful poppin storage bins — Poppin Storage Bins

The Shelves

The Quinn Floating Shelves from West Elm came a few months after Evie was born. We needed somewhere for the things that mattered that weren’t toys —objects with stories, with meaning, and things worth keeping out of reach but in sight. I tried shelves from H&M Kids first, but didn’t love the narrow depth or metal construction. The Quinn shelves blended into the wall with a neutral warm grey tone yet had enough texture to give the flat white surface some personality.

image of scalloped metal wall shelf in seafoam green — H&M Metal Wall Shelf

image of fluted beige wall shelf — H&M Metal Wall Shelf

What lives on them now is a small but sentimental collection of things: IKEA sculptural figures. A small bear made of alpaca fur that I found in a small shop in DC during World Pride, drawn to it the way I’m always drawn to all things that remind me of our Pomeranians. A wooden NYC music box from Odin Parker. A framed Hebrew blessing from her baby naming ceremony. A Liberty Fabric letter E — because we both wear E necklaces for Evie, and because I wanted something that said: you are a person with an identity, and this space is yours. A silver piggy bank with her name on it.

And the pear. A knitted pear with a worm in his pocket, given to me by my twin sister. She said she saw him and knew she had to buy it before she even knew we were expecting. He’s absurd in exactly the way Emily and I have always been absurd together — the kind of thing a child might invent, slightly random, inexplicably loveable. Evie already seems to get it.

knitted pear stuffed animal — Bartlett the Pear

wooden New York City music box — Bartlett the Pear

The Room She Made Hers

We spent a lot of time on this room before Evie had any opinions about it. Now she has plenty.

Her favorite thing, if you’re wondering, is the mirrored closet wall that came with the apartment — the one we weren’t sure about, the one we definitely didn’t choose. She loves to look at herself, at us, at the whole room reflected back at her like a wide-angle lens on her own life. We think about the metaphor sometimes.

She knows this room. She knows its routines, its light, its sounds. And now that she’s started walking with assistance, she leads us down the hall and back to her room with a huge smile and a happy squeal every single time.

We made a good room. She made it hers.

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Things We Love in Evie’s room:

Bringing Color Into a Gender Neutral Nursery: How We Designed Evie’s Room

Images from my initial nursery planning vision board and images of our home

The Room

Rendered and Photograph images of Evie’s room