Alternate title: Breaking Out John’s Painting Belt
It felt familiar and a little comforting to strap on the painting belt again. If that reference is unfamiliar, there’s an earlier post that explains the whole thing. This time around we tackled Clara’s nursery. Rather than recreate the exact look from our old house, we used the move as an excuse to change the wall color. Since we kept most of the major pieces—the furniture, the light fixture and the curtains (I couldn’t bear to part with them)—a new paint color was enough to refresh the space without completely reinventing it.
Choosing the right shade took a bit of debate. We considered blue, but that would have been too much with the blue bedding, changing pad cover, and elements in the curtains. Green felt too similar to the past nursery. Yellow didn’t appear elsewhere in the room, so it would have seemed random. A neutral felt safe but a little boring for a kid’s room, and pink immediately felt potentially too girly. In the end we landed on a pink with a twist: subtle, sophisticated, and leaning toward gray and lavender rather than bright candy pink.
There are soft pink tones in the curtains and in the handmade mobiles we plan to hang, so a muted pink felt like a natural fit. But instead of a straightforward ballet or baby pink, we wanted a hue with depth—soft gray and lavender undertones that keep the color from reading as overtly pastel or fussy. The paint swatches made the choice easier: one swatch in particular read cooler and muddier, with a subtle lavender-gray cast that felt sophisticated and layered.
The result is a color with dimension, not a flat pink. The tone we picked is called Proposal from Benjamin Moore’s Affinity collection, which captures that mix of pink, gray and lavender we were after. To keep the nursery low-VOC, we had the shade color-matched to Olympic’s No-VOC formula at Lowe’s, which now uses no-VOC colorants as well—ideal for a child’s room.
Photographs don’t always capture the subtle undertones, but in person the walls read as a soft, nuanced pink with cool gray and lavender hints. Below are a few shots that show the room before, during, and after painting so you can see the progression.
During the painting we moved larger furniture to the center of the room and covered it with a plastic tarp to protect finishes. Keeping the floors and hardware protected made the process quick and low-stress, and it allowed us to concentrate on cutting in and getting even coverage on the walls and trim.
And here’s the room now:
The space will feel even more layered and intentional once we hang art, shelves, the curtains and the mobiles. We also plan to swap the ceiling fan for the blue capiz chandelier, which should add warmth and contrast to the subtle pink walls. For now the painted room already reads softer and more cohesive, tying into the curtain pattern and the existing furnishings without feeling like a repeat of the previous nursery.
Clara’s comfort has been our priority through the move. Her room is meant to be a calm, settled spot in a house that will otherwise be in flux for quite a while. We’re excited to finish the finishing touches and share the completed look when we hang everything up and style the shelves. In the meantime, you’ll find us staring at a wall of paint swatches in the living room, deciding what to tackle next.