Now, I’m no interior designer but that doesn’t stop me from scrolling through Pinterest at unearthly hours for design inspo, and perusing Instagram accounts that satisfy my dream home ambitions on a daily basis. Having not updated my bedroom since 2011, some much-needed renovation was years in the making and finally happened in 2020.
I’m sure I don’t just speak for myself when I say that a bedroom is more than a place to sleep. It’s an extension of your personality, it’s a place to escape the outside world and make sense of your thoughts, it’s the backdrop to FaceTime with friends, it’s your working-from-home office space, it’s a place to try on each item in your wardrobe before deciding you have nothing to wear and making another online order.
With that in mind, investing some TLC and paying attention to your space can make such a difference, so in this post I’m sharing some tips which I followed myself when decorating my room which can help you elevate your space and lift your mood.
Before we get into my tips, a key piece of advice I would give when you come to think about updating your space is this: follow what makes you feel good. This underpins each of the tips I’m about to share and should be kept in mind when choosing the colours, textures, patterns and personal belongings you want to display.
Create as much light as possible
Studies have shown that light can improve your mood and energy levels, and in particular natural light can promote the release of serotonin. So, injecting some extra light into your room is a great place to start when looking to elevate your space and lift your mood.
For me, this involved going for light paint on the walls and light herringbone-style wood on the floor. If you’re not looking to totally redecorate your space, it might not be feasible to change the entire floor or every wall, but instead there are smaller changes you can make which will still make a big difference.
If you don’t have a large window to let in lots of natural light, having lighter finishes inside your room will help any natural light that does come in to bounce around a lot more and make things feel brighter and less enclosed. You can do this by dressing your space with light soft furnishings, whether it be your bedding, a new rug, or a throw over the back of your chair. Adding mirrors is another way to help bounce light around the room and make the space feel bigger without trying too hard or totally reconfiguring the entire space – it’s simple but very effective.
While natural light is my favourite mood boosting solution, artificial light in the form of fairy lights, dimmable LED bulbs and interesting lamps are also good alternatives and are equally great for adding character and setting the right mood.
My favourite places for mirrors and lamps:
Play with texture
This is one of the easiest ways to boost the cosiness level from zero to a hundred.
An interesting rug, big blankets, and throws will always make for welcome new additions to your room. When it comes to bedding and pillows, brushed cotton, silk, and linen are beautiful textures and make a nice change from your everyday duvet set. Now, let’s move our focus back to the window. Just like with bedding, linen is a great material for achieving a lightweight look with lovely movement in your curtains. Additionally, if you already have blinds, pairing them with linen curtains can create lovely layering and give you flexibility with blocking out different amounts of light.
Mixing materials when it comes to your furniture also shouldn’t be overlooked when it comes to experimenting with texture. Whether you mix woods with metals, or metal with glass, combining textures can prevent a room from looking flat and give each part of your room some extra character.
My favourite places for soft furnishings:
Add some plants
Green can be such a calming colour, so injecting some nature into your space with a plant or two is a great way to incorporate this colour without it being too much. Whether you go for live plants or artificial alternatives, small ones can make for great fillers in a shelf display, and large ones can stand proudly in an empty corner you’re not quite sure what to do with.
My favourite places for plants:
Create a ‘feel-good’ display
We all love things that are aesthetically pleasing, in particular when it comes to styling, as the famous ‘Rule of Three’ would suggest, there’s something really satisfying about display items in groups of 3.
Bring empty surface spaces to life with items you love displayed nicely so that when you look at the area you know you’ll feel joy. Photos of family and friends, beautiful coffee table books, plants, and decorative ornaments are a great place to start. Alternatively, if you don’t have much spare surface space, creating a gallery wall by framing and grouping your favourite prints, personal photos or works of art is a great way to create a pretty display without making things feel cluttered.
My favourite places for decorative books and ornaments:
Have a functional system
This tip allows you to work with what you’ve got before thinking about what to add, and will help you bring calm to the chaos.
It’s all well and good having a space that looks beautiful, but if it doesn’t work beautifully in your day-to-day then the rest becomes redundant and it can be easy to slip into chaos more often than not. Having a functional system should help you eliminate stress which may arise when getting things done in your room, whether it be a simple task like getting dressed, or having an important Zoom meeting.
Have regularly used items within easy reach and make them accessible – it’s no-good rearranging your desk to have a beautiful display of decorative items in each corner without being able to see your notebook or access a pen in the middle of work – incorporate your everyday items in the beauty of the room first. Simple things like putting summer clothes in one part of the wardrobe and organising things into categories that work best for you will give you some form of order and make things clearer. For example, in my wardrobe, when it comes to crop tops, I have an almost silly amount, so they’ve been categorised into types: cropped vests, cropped t-shirts, cropped long-sleeve tops, and bandeaus. On top of this, they’ve also been colour coordinated so I can easily see and grab the one I want without sifting through an untidy mess.
The truth that lies in “tidy space, tidy mind” is real.
N A T A S H A 