How To Style a Bed
There’s nothing like making your bed look complete with a luxurious headboard, linen duvet cover, and some decorative pillows.
For thousands of years, a bed like yours has symbolized rest, luxury, intimacy, and comfort. And yet, if your life is filled with family obligations, a busy career, and other things that fill your days, it might feel difficult to create a bedroom space that is as relaxing as it is aesthetically oriented.
When it comes down to it, a bed isn’t just a place to sleep. It’s a space designed for comfort but is really only used about half the time. During your waking hours, a bed is an opportunity to create a unified interior design aesthetic within your bedroom space. If you’re styling your bed, a guest bedroom, or a children’s bed, the design commitments will vary. However, these are some general suggestions that can be helpful for styling a bed across rooms.
Building Your Bed From the Ground Up
Whether you’re thinking of transforming the king-size bed in your master bedroom or are seeking guidance on DIYbed styling and home decor for your guest room, it’s all about building a bed within the context of the existing room design.
Consider the room you’re working with and what your goals are with it. Are you looking to transform your existing interior design? Are you in search of the perfect rug to fit neatly underneath your bed? Perhaps you simply want to know how to style the pillows on your bed.
A helpful place to start is from the base layer of the bed and move up through the layers of the bed. Begin by selecting a sheet set — fitted sheets, pillowcases, and flat sheets or top sheets — in a color and type that fits with the broader context of the room.
Selecting a neutral base layer for the bed, which includes your bed frame, bed skirt, linen sheets, coverlets, and euro shams, is an effective way to start styling a bed. Place emphasis on a color that’s light and airy, or a subtle neutral, giving you the freedom to make your bed as cozy and colorful as possible with comforters, duvets, and throw pillows.
1. Selecting a Color Palette for Your Styled Bed
Styling with color is everything, and it's important to consider how the colors you choose can impact the rest of your styling choices. Pick too loud of a color for your bed’s base layers, and you might end up with an overwhelming amount of color concentrated on one element in your bedroom.
It’s always helpful to have two neutral colors and one accent color, which you can introduce through square pillows and standard pillows, throws, and even lighting elements on your bedside tables.
Another high-impact way to highlight your selected color palette is through the rug underneath your bed. Allowing for a rug to brighten or soften a space as needed can really create a sense of cohesion across the elements of the room.
In addition to neutral and accent colors, consider how you might lace color through patterns across the bedroom. Whether that pattern is a repeated motif from rug to pillow or an element traced across wallpaper and lampshades, it’s always effective to create cohesion rather than placing unrelated elements into the same space.
Less can be more, especially when it comes to color and design. If you do choose to take a more maximalist approach, however, remember that it's all about creating connections between design elements.
2. Dream Big With Pillows
Pillows are the fun part, but it does take some finesse to style them effectively. There are seemingly limitless options when it comes to the style, shape, and size of the pillow that you can bring in when styling your bed. Beginning with your neutral pillows, you can expand outwards in any direction you’d like.
Styling with an odd number of pillows is pretty much the go-to rule when thinking about how many pillows to include on your bed. Select pillows that highlight what your style objectives are, whether they be introducing color, connecting a texture to a neighboring wallpaper, or simply creating a cohesive design through repetition of color.
When placing pillows, work your way from one side to the other, always from the base layer of pillows forwards. With your sleeping pillows in the back for neck and lumbar support, you can build layers of pillows from there. Be mindful that you don’t overload your bed with pillows, however, and give enough breathing space for the style to remain light and breathable.
3. Build Comfort All-Around
If blankets are your thing, then this is where you shine. Blankets offer comfort, layering, and aesthetic nods to other elements in your room. Whether you’re interested in blankets providing additional comfort and warmth or are purely interested in their aesthetic value, a well-draped blanket at the end of the bed can make a statement.
Building comfort with good-qualitythrow blankets at the foot of the bed offers an opportunity to introduce a pop of color, texture, or pattern to an otherwise neutral space. The possibilities are truly endless when it comes to what kind of blanket you might want on your bed, but tying it in with the colors of the room is key.
An effective strategy for connecting your bed with the rest of your room is to create cohesiveness between the throws on your bed and your bedroom rug. There’s always an opportunity to connect through pattern and color, and lacing a color from floor to ceiling in a way that’s intentional and subtle can really make a statement.
In addition, your bedroom rug can tie the other elements in your room together, including your nightstand and drapes.
The Bottom Line
Your bed should be all about comfort. It is, after all, a place of refuge after a busy week filled with work, family, and other obligations that tire you out. After a long day, there’s nothing more relaxing than falling into a comfortable bed.
When you’re not sleeping, however, your bed offers an opportunity to make a statement about how you feel about comfort. Are you a pillows-piled-high kind of person? Perhaps you defer to blankets for the ultimate statement about comfort.
When you think about building your ideal bed, what comes to mind when you think of comfort? Placing your bed in the context of the bedroom is also key, as you want that comfort to spill over into the rest of the room.
Selecting a rug underneath your bed is an effortless way to enjoy comfort as you first step out of bed in the morning, to the last moment before getting to sleep at the end of the day. Whether subtle or a statement, a soft rug underneath your feet is a sure way to bring an entire element of care to your bedroom environment.
Sources:
A Five-Star Hotel Guide to Dressing, Layering and Styling a Bed | Homes and Gardens
