Making your bedroom a relaxing haven

Making your bedroom a relaxing haven | H is for Home

When you get ready for sleep, you want your bedroom to be inviting. Make it a warm and comfortable space where the hassles and stresses of life melt away, leaving you able to relax and unwind. To achieve this, choose the right furnishings and accessories – and add a touch of creativity to your bedroom. Coming up, we’ll give you some useful tips on what kinds of surroundings will transform your bedroom into a relaxing haven.

Hand testing the hardness of a mattress

The bed

The bed in your room is your primary piece of furniture. It’s also the item you’ll utilise the most and it will have the biggest impact on your life. It affects how well you sleep and the consequences of a good or bad night’s sleep carry on throughout your day. Therefore, having the right bed is very important for your physical and mental well-being. Finding the right bed can be a complicated task and several factors affect whether a bed is right for you.

The size of your bed can also greatly affect how inviting your room is. There are a lot of different sizes of beds on the market and it might be tempting to get the biggest bed possible that you can roll over and stretch out with space to spare. However, that’s not always a good idea. Having a bed that’s too large can make your room feel cramped. When you squeeze all of your other furniture into your room, you’ll probably feel as if you’re sleeping in a claustrophobic, cluttered mess. It’s important to pick a bed that’s large enough to accommodate your needs, but doesn’t fill every spare inch of your room.

Choosing a bed that’s too small can have the reverse effect. Your room might feel spacious and open, but your bed will feel too cramped for restful sleep. It’s best to go with a practical sized bed that accommodates you and your partner, but also keeps the room feeling as if there’s plenty of space to move around and accommodate other furnishings.

The firmness of the mattress you choose is dependant upon what you personally find comfortable – and what special requirements you might have for your body size & shape, physical ailments, preferred sleep position and so on. Mattresses are available in a wide variety of firmness levels; they can vary from extremely soft to extremely firm, with all the gradations in-between. Most people want one that’s somewhere in the middle of those two extremes.

If you need some help finding mattresses and bed sets, you can check out some of these mattresses for sale and see if there’s one that ticks all your boxes.

Bed with bedside table and reading lamp

Lighting

Lighting sets the mood for your room. You don’t want a super bright bedroom when it’s the place in which you’re trying to relax and unwind. Equally, you probably don’t want a room that’s pitch black when you wake up in the morning. The perfect lighting is in between – bright enough so you can still move around safely or do things, but it doesn’t give the room the feeling that it’s permanently midnight!

When choosing lighting, you have to take the natural lighting from windows into account and plan your artificial light sources around that. Lampshades can drastically alter the lighting in a room and come in a huge variety of designs and options – whether it be ambient lighting to create mood, or task lighting to read. Obviously, lamps should be visually appealing, but at the same time not too distracting.

Try to choose a lampshade that spreads the light out evenly, but does so in a way that makes the lighting very gentle on the eyes. If you need more help on picking the correct shade, this article will be helpful.

Bedroom with a neutral colour palette

Colour palette and its effect on your mood

The colour palette used in your bedroom is extremely important when trying to create a relaxing and inviting bedroom. Bright, over-the-top, engaging colours will stimulate your mind in ways that prevent you from relaxing and falling asleep. On the other hand, some darker colours can make your room depressing and uninviting. Many people opt for schemes that incorporate a mostly neutral colour palette with splashes of highlight colours – perhaps coffee or chocolate hues – or pops of something a little brighter that gives you a lift in the morning without being overpowering at night time. Forbes has an excellent feature on bedroom design that covers colour schemes if you need further reading.

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Get their look: Four-poster bedroom

Four-poster bedroomcredit

One of the most sure-fire ways to give a bedroom a bit of pizazz is investing in a four-poster bed. This four-poster bedroom is living proof. It’s the property of fellow lifestyle blogger, Rohini Wahi whose website is The Beat That My Heart Skipped.

It’s a very stylish space, combining contemporary furnishings with vintage touches very successfully. The bed is the star of the show – complimented perfectly by the mid century style sideboard and bedside table in similar wood tones.

As you can see, I’m still having a bit of a love affair with yellow in interiors; this particular shade on the wall is India Yellow by Farrow & Ball.

  1. Copper industrial pendant
  2. Flowers in a Vase with Shells and Insects by Balthasar van der Ast
  3. Belgrave side table with drawer
  4. Farrow & Ball India Yellow No.66 Matt Estate emulsion paint
  5. Cushion cover
  6. Kaleidoscope bedspread
  7. Solid oak vintage long sideboard
  8. Amsterdam solid teak 160 x 200 king-size four-poster bed

Get their look: Four-poster bedroom | H is for Home

Tips for transforming your bedroom into a relaxing space

'Tips for transforming your bedroom into a relaxing space' blog post banner

colourful bedroom with tree patterned wallpaper

Your bedroom should be a safe haven, a place where you can relax, unwind and forget about the troubles and stresses of the world outside. However, many of us don’t maximise on the space that we have to make into the sanctuary that we both need and deserve. To make your bedroom more relaxing, there are several changes you can make to improve on the quality of your rest, which can improve your overall health as well as your emotional and mental well-being. Here are some ways that you can make your bedroom more relaxing.

desk space in a bedroom

Make space to sit

If your bedroom is big enough and you have the room to play around a bit, then you should consider making a little seating area in your bedroom. Many of us just end up sprawling across the bed to read or mess around on our laptops, but this can affect our sleep patterns because we end up associating the bed with mental activity when it should be associated with rest.

Either bring in a chair or small sofa, or do something even simpler like put some cushions on your windowsill to make a nifty window seat. This is a great way to make your bedroom a more relaxing space, giving you a place to curl up and unwind.

cream bedding with yellow ochre throw and coloured cushions

Invest in a new bed and mattress

Your bed is extremely important, so it’s crucial that it’s of a high quality and provides you with the right level of comfort and support so you get the most out of your rest. If you’ve been sleeping less well lately, or have noticed that you’re tossing and turning more in the night and waking up feeling less rested, then it may be time for a new bed and mattress.

A high quality bed and mattress can transform your sleep and rejuvenate you. Visit Bedstar for more information, and see if you can find a new bed and mattress that suits your needs. They provide a wide range of bed frames and help you find the best mattress with their online questionnaire. Ordering a bed from Bedstar online will also guarantee you next day delivery, so you don’t have to worry about when your new bed will arrive.

Bedroom with cream colour scheme

Create an atmosphere

At the moment, does your bedroom really feel like a place where you can relax or is it just somewhere to put your head down at the end of the day?

Redecorating your bedroom can be a great way to create a relaxing atmosphere. For example, painting the walls in a calming colour can help you to unwind at night, and lighting can also be used to help you wind down in time for bed. By investing in some dimmer lights or soft bedside lamps, you can transform your bedroom into a serene and relaxing space.

Remember that your bedroom should be your sanctuary, rather than just another room in your house. By making a few simple changes, you can make your bedroom a more relaxing space, giving you somewhere to rest and refresh yourself.