A beautiful bedroom is often a priority that eludes us. It is however important to have a sanctuary where you can luxuriate, escape the pressures of the outside world, and find peace away from the stresses of life.
Styling your bedroom is an opportunity to create that special space where you can rest, think and sleep. It is also an opportunity to unleash your creativity, but sometimes those two objectives don’t mesh well together.
Therefore, it is important to style your bedroom in a way that is not only aesthetically pleasing but also conducive to relaxation and sleep.
Here are my five top tips on how to meet both goals so the end result is a truly dream-worthy bedroom.
1. Start with a soothing colour palette
The colours you choose will have the biggest impact on the way your bedroom looks and feels.
A muted colour scheme will bring a sense of serenity to the room. Start with a neutral wall colour and then layer the soft furnishings in muted greys, oatmeal, sage or duck egg blue.
Keep the number of colours you use to a minimum, and go for different tones of the same colour rather than contrasting colours.
If you find selecting colours challenging, an easy hack is to choose an artwork that reflects the look you love and then pick colours from it for your paintwork, bedding and decor.
As for sleep, a survey by Travelodge found that, by far, the colour most conducive to sleep is blue. Do with that as you wish!
2. Make the bed the star of the show
When it comes to beds, size matters. Go for the biggest bed you can comfortably fit in the room so that it is luxurious to sleep in but also makes a visual impact. If you need a specific bed that will cater to your health needs like proper positioning while sleeping and reading, check out this guide ‘the best adjustable beds in Australia‘ to find out which bed suits you.
The position of the bed also matters. Good feng shui requires the bed to be adjacent to the doorway so you can see the door from the bed but without the foot of the bed pointing directly at the doorway, which is known as the coffin position. Eek!
Style-wise, you want the bed to be the first thing you see when you enter the room. When dressed to impress, it will make a good first impression and invite you in to luxuriate between the feather-light covers.
3. Use lots of lovely layers
When dressing the bed, layer it with natural fibre textiles: buttery linen sheets, feather doonas, organic cotton quilts and throws.
Layering enables you to combine a mix of textures and tones.
The ability to shed layers also helps with the regulation of body temperature. Overheating is not a friend to sleep. In fact, a study demonstrated that the temperature has a much bigger impact on sleep than noise.
Consider layering the lighting too, with a pendant or downlights for ambient lighting, maybe a back-lit bedhead, wall sconces for accent lighting, and directional bedside lamps for task lighting, such as reading.
Also, remember to add dimmers to be able to manage the lighting levels and eliminate the light from bluescreens as much as possible.
4. Bring in nature
The jury is out on whether plants in the bedroom are healthy or not. I say yes, but only because I love those lush green leaves against crisp white bedding.
Whether you agree or not, you want to get as close to nature as possible with your bedroom style. This applies to shapes, materials and patterns.
Include soft organic shapes in your furnishings, such as a custom bedhead, chair or floor lamp. Include natural materials such as timber, linen and cotton, and look for handcrafted bedroom accessories like those from Provider Store.
Patterns can also mirror nature, especially in your textiles and wallpaper. For example, a quilted cotton coverlet with a small palm tree pattern could mirror more majestic palms in your wall art.
5. Double up your window dressings
I personally love gauzy, natural fibre curtains that hang from the ceiling and puddle on the floor. Hang them from the ceiling to make your ceiling look higher, while the puddling makes them appear luxuriously long.
However, they are not effective light blockers and a good sleep demands the elimination of light.
In order to achieve full block out, you can combine your gorgeous curtains with a full block out layer hung on a separate track so that it can be drawn closed at night. When you rise in the morning, you can draw them back off the window during the day.
Of course, you can always engage a stylist to create your sanctuary for snoozing but there can be a lot of joy in creating your own nurturing space. By following these simple steps you will create a bedroom that is not only beautiful but truly dream-worthy.
