Bemelman’s Inspired Nursery

When I found out that I was pregnant, I immediately began looking for nursery inspiration. To be honest, I needed something to keep my mind occupied with anything other than baby related things. Completing this nursery project kept me slightly sane during pregnancy and I couldn’t be happier that our baby now has a very adorable room! My goal was to make the room whimsical, gender neutral since we didn’t know what we were having, and functional. I hope you enjoy seeing how this Bemelman’s inspired nursery came together!

It would be remiss not to mention that while this is a Bemelman’s inspired nursery, I was also heavily influenced by Beata Heuman. You can see her gorgeous children’s room here. Her interiors are all stunning and aspirational, so if you want to see more, I highly recommend her book. I love the way she painted a scaled down version of Bemelman’s bar. This was how I approached my nursery as well. In addition to the Madeline scenes, I also included some special paintings from Colin’s and my childhood favorites. For Colin, I painted Calvin and Hobbes, and for myself, Harry Potter.

For those who have been around for a while, this room may look familiar! It is Colin’s old office. We debated which room to make the nursery, but since half our family and friends live in the Philadelphia area, it was important to us to keep a guest room. Colin has also been talking about making a basement office since we moved into this house. Expect to see more on that soon!

I only have one actual picture of me painting this nursery, but I did take a lot of videos. I’ll be posting them on Instagram if you are interested in seeing a bit of the process. And it was a process. I started by gathering the Madeline and Bemelman’s scenes I wanted to recreate. Then I sketched veryyyy rough mock-ups on paper of where each scene would go in the room. Next, I free handed each scene in pencil on the wall. Finally, I painted each and added dimension and detail. The whole room probably took around 40 hours to complete, but I wouldn’t change a thing! I hope you enjoyed looking through photos of this Bemelman’s inspired nursery. Our baby certainly seems to like it so far, and that’s what counts!