Before and After: 2 Rainbow Paint Projects Totaling $170 Brighten This Once-Boring Nursery

Although a perfect paint choice is worth celebrating any month, July is Apartment Therapy’s monthlong celebration of all things colorful — and what better place for DIYers to experiment with bold, whimsical, colorful paint than in nurseries?

In this nursery from DIYer Hana Sethi (@hanashappyhome), two paint projects (one for around $100, and one for $70) help to add a bit of playfulness using the full spectrum of the rainbow.

Before, the nursery was a “blank canvas,” Hana says. The beige walls really dimmed things down, as did the rest of the beige decor. So Hana decided to go bold and add a rainbow mural to the wall.

“I had to paint this room a bright white (Sherwin-Williams’s Extra White) so that the rainbow would pop,” Hana said on her blog. It was her first mural, and she used small cans of Behr Marquee paint ($5 each) for each stripe.

“The hardest part was mapping out and taping the design,” Hana says. In all, it took her about 10 hours — two of those were spent measuring and taping, and five were spent on painting and retouching the paint.

Hana’s rainbow is a modern geometric twist on the typical arched shape, which will work well for anchoring the space even as the crib in front of it gets a big-kid bed swap. (The same design would work great in other rooms, too, and could be customized with any range of colors you choose.)

To create perfect spacing for her “reinvented rainbow,” as she calls it on her blog, she aligned the tallest stripe (the center of the rainbow) with the height of the window in the room and marked off 7-inch-wide stripes in 3-inch descending intervals from there. Her stripe colors are Diva Glam, Prairie Rose, Toucan, Squash Blossom, Shanghai Jade, SolitaryTree, Yucatan, Perfect Sky, Unimaginable, I Heart Potion, and a custom color mix. The end result is a cheerful and totally unique take on rainbows that doesn’t feel baby-ish at all.

“The lines and measurements are prefect. It is such a statement in this small room!” Hana says. In addition to the statement wall, Hanna added a splash of color to a kids’ IKEA desk, which also solves a function problem that the nursery had before.

“This little girl loves to color and draw, but there was no space for her,” Hana says. “She had no toy storage either.” So Hana made a craft corner filled with clever DIYS that prove even kid’s furniture can grow with a space: “The craft corner is actually an IKEA table and chair that used to be her brother’s. I love that we used something she already had and upcycled it!” she says.

She sanded (again, time consuming) and painted the IKEA SUNDVIK and added the scallop design to personalize it. She also added bins for crayons and frames that can easily be swapped easily to display homemade artwork. With finishing touches like the snake plant, the plush gray and white rug, and canopy to conceal toys in the corner, this nursery has gone from boring to bespoke. The best part? Its undeniable cheeriness.

“Every time I look at it, I can’t help but smile,” Hana says. Her advice to those considering going bold with color: “Go for it! Have fun! It’s just paint.”

Inspired? Submit your own project here.