Aimee Kick

Interior Design Portfolio Sample

Modern Nursery Design Process

Welcome to the Modern Nursery. My clients were a few months out from welcoming their son into the world and were having a hard time agreeing on a style direction for the nursery. The husband preferred glass, chrome, and sleek finishes. The wife liked color, texture, and whimsy. They brought me in to settle the debate with their only hard request: avoid baby boy cliches. I sourced furniture, decor items, art, and planned and painted a mural for this project.

Before

Phase 1: Sourcing Items to Tell a Story

Knowing that my clients were high-achieving and resistant to tradition, this room needed to have a sense of energy and exuberance to it. Rather than focus on the baby stage of this nursery, I designed in anticipation of the quickly looming toddler years by selecting toys that also worked as decor and art that their son could grow up with.

Phase 2: Fine-tuning

My clients were excited about having Montessori-style decor in the room with interesting wooden toys. Now that the general tone had been established, I needed to fine-tune the design with art, furniture and layers. Unfortunately through this process, it became clear that the husband was very opposed to the use of color. He rejected almost all decor with colors and resisted against colored walls, while the wife heavily petitioned for strong colors and varied textures. I split the difference by selecting art that had cheerful colors, but lots of negative space in the composition. Knowing that I was going to have a hard time making any of the walls interesting with paint or other details, I tentatively pitched the idea of a floor to ceiling mural.

Phase 3: Expanding the Wall Design

While knowing that the husband disliked most expressive things, I had my work cut-out to present the concept of a mural without designing it in its entirety, should he veto the idea immediately. I sourced Florence Lopez’s living room mural, based off of the work of Roberto Burle Marx. While appreciating the lines and colors of the original mural, I knew that my mural needed to continue to incorporate negative space and not tip the balance of the room to one side. This meant that I needed to make sure that the linework worked with the specific elements of this wall and had exuberance with an underpinning of calm. Fortunately, the husband agreed to the mural with a sudden last-minute declaration that he hated the color green. I pivoted to blue tones with minor accent colors, sourced paint and got to work painting the mural. I installed the remaining art and decor, continuing to be mindful of the room’s sense of balance.