Dulux Blogger Challenge: Woodland Nursery Revamp

Many of you are probably not aware of this as I haven’t really publicised it until very recently but I thought is was about time I shared some great news with you. My husband and I are new parents! Baby Matylda arrived on the 11th December 2013, bang on her due date, which is very unusual for first babies, so I’m told. So we’ve had a lot of big changes happen for us in 2013; we bought our first flat together in October and now we are parents. It’s been a pretty busy few months and that’s why I’ve been blogging a little less than usual. We’ve had decorating to do, although to be honest we don’t really have the money just now to get the flat exactly how we’d like it so this will be on ongoing project for us. We did manage to do the livingroom though and I’m really very happy with that. Perhaps I’ll do a separate post on that in the new year. But for now I wanted to share a very special project with you and one that I am extremely proud of…our woodland nursery.

When we moved into our new flat the whole place was floor to ceiling magnolia in every room so not very inspiring and certainly not very stimulating for a new baby as you can see from the before pictures I took above (sorry about the poor quality of the photos, the winter lighting proved a real challenge). We were just starting to think about if and how we could redecorate on a very tight budget when I was contacted by Dulux about a new project it was launching to celebrate the Let’s Colour Guarantee and the Let’s Colour Weekends. Following a recent study that reveals how embarrassed Brits are with their homes and how it’s affecting their lives, Dulux decided to launch a challenge to interior bloggers to help Brits get more daring with colour in their homes.

According to research more than two thirds of Brits are ashamed of their home and a shocking 47 percent avoid having friends or family over as a result. Moreover, the average Brit is embarrassed of at least one room in their house and one in 10 Brits don’t like a single room in their current home, stating dated or marked carpets, faded paintwork and a bad colour schemes as the main reasons. Bedrooms, bathrooms and livingrooms were found to be the rooms we are most embarrassed of and colourful décor was found to be the key ingredient to achieving a home that we Brits are happy with. An astounding 97 percent stated that bright colours on their walls uplifted their mood, made them happy and created a space they wanted to be in.

Dulux creative director, Marianne Shillingford said:

“The study reveals what we at Dulux have believed for a long time; the home is more than somewhere you live, it’s a central part of your life! We firmly believe in the power of colour and how it can be used to create a beautiful living space that makes people feel great when they’re in it and want to share that feeling with others. We’re hoping our Let’s Colour Guarantee will give Brits the chance to improve their home with confidence and reassurance.”

And I have to say I agree totally with Marianne. It’s so important to feel good in your own home and having the right colour scheme is an integral part of the way you feel about your home. So the Dulux Blogger Challenge couldn’t have come at a better time for us. But what did the challenge involve? Well, I was asked to choose a Dulux colour that’s bold, bright and a shade I’ve always considered using but have hesitated to apply, and to use it to redecorate a room in my home. Dulux then kindly supplied me with 2.5 litres of paint, free of charge, to use for the project. And the great thing was, that due to the Dulux Let’s Colour Guarantee, if I didn’t like the final result, Dulux would provide me with an alternative paint shade so that I could change it to something I would be happier with – just like they are offering consumers. This took all the fear and worry out of redecorating so I was happy to dive straight in.

I decided I wanted to use two colours in the nursery and at the moment I’m really loving shades of green. I had just painted my living room in Dulux’s Moss Blanket and I find it ever so calming so I thought perhaps green would be a great colour for a gender neutral nursery (we didn’t know whether we were having a girl or a boy!). I opted for Jungle Fever in shades 3 and 5 and I think they are the perfect colours for our woodland theme. I decided to paint two walls in each colour so the room wasn’t too dark as four walls in Jungle Fever 3 may have been a bit much. We also decided that it would be a nice idea to paint some trees on the walls and for this we choose two shades of brown in Velvet Truffle 2 and 3. After drawing a rough sketch of what the trees would look like we simply dug straight in and marked them out on the wall with Frog Tape (if you don’t know what Frog Tape is, then I definitely recommend you pay a visit to the website as it’s a must have painting tool).

Once all four walls had been painted and the trees were finished, it was just the finishing touches that we needed to do. We put some shelves above the changing table which we have used to display an array of small stuffed woodland animals. We bought a set of four side plates from Magpie and mounted them on the wall above the cotbed. The Beasties collection is Magpie’s first collaboration with Carola Van Dyke and takes four of Carola’s fantastic applique textile animals – Mr. Badger, Mr. Fox, Mr. Hare and Mr. Stag – and places them on ceramic plates. We bought some really cute repositionable woodland animal stickers by RoomMates and dotted these around the room. And finally we moved a few things from other rooms in the house as they seemed to fit much better in the nursery. We put up two hangers – one butterfly hanger and one of two love birds – from Muslavi Gallery that were previously hanging up in our bedroom and we also decided that our ceramic house lamp that we got from Next as part of my styling challenge was a perfect addition to the nursery.

I’d love to know what you guys think of our little one’s nursery and also I’d be really interested to read your comments on the research that inspired Dulux’s blogger challenge in the first place. What effect does colourful décor have on the way that you feel about your home?

I would like to thank Dulux for inviting me to take part in the Blogger Challenge and kindly providing the paint. I would also like to thank my mum who made me the lovely quilt and cot bumper for the cotbed (she’s so talented!).

 

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Disclosure: This post has been written in partnership with Dulux who provided the product for us to review. However, all the opinions in this review are our own and we stress that we only collaborate with brands and companies that we genuinely like and believe that our readers will like too.