id 810 design group
By Erin Carlyle; reposted with permission from Houzz
First-time homebuyers expecting a baby asked their designers to create a gender-neutral nursery in their newly built Brooklyn condo. The result is a fun, inviting space that feels larger than its dimensions.
Nursery at a Glance
Who lives here: Lana and Steven Kleiman, with their toddler and baby
Location: Carroll Gardens neighborhood of Brooklyn
Size: 120 square feet (11.1 square meters); 10 by 12 feet (3 by 3.6 meters)
Designers: Jessica Geller and Virginia Toledo of id 810 design group
When Lana and Steven Kleiman were expecting their first child, they also bought their first home — a new condominium in the Carroll Gardens neighborhood of Brooklyn.
“It was kind of overwhelming, a blank slate,” Lana says. “We just wanted to move in and do it right. And do it all at once, because I knew I wasn’t going to be able to invest too much of my own time once the baby came.”
The Kleimans hired Jessica Geller — a designer Lana had grown up with — and Virginia Toledo to take on the three-bedroom condominium, including the nursery for their new baby.
“They weren’t going to find out the gender,” Toledo says. “So we had to make sure that the palette spoke to both genders.”
Geller and Toledo started with the wallpaper, from Minakani in Paris, which Lana had spotted in a magazine. The company stretched the scale of the animals to fit the scale of the room. Designer and blogger Emily Henderson also used the wallpaper in her own son’s nursery, and Toledo noticed that the popularity of the print subsequently soared.
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“At the time that we selected it, it wasn’t as popular,” Toledo says. “We had to wire the money to France for the order. There wasn’t a local distributor.”
To create a greater sense of volume in the small, somewhat boxy room, Geller and Toledo created a diagonally striped ceiling using Benjamin Moore’s Super White and Sunny Afternoon paint.
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“The ceiling was a deal-breaker for us, and luckily they were and are very trusting with the design decisions,” Toledo says of the Kleimans. “When you walk in, that’s one of the most eye-catching things. That sets the stage for it to feel like a larger space.”
Geller and Toledo selected a crib that has traditional white slats, but with a twist in the form of a silvery, champagne-colored finish for the detailing at the crib’s ends.
“It’s a little more special than just a painted gray color,” Geller says.
The yellow and gray twig-print drapery fabric echoes the tree-like shape of the chartreuse lamp.
“We picked that chartreuse color to add that unexpected element that is a vibrant and fun injection into the room,” Geller says.