The bedroom of your dreams
Tips on colors, flooring, lighting and mattress choices
One of the best moments of a long day often comes at the very end, when you fall into bed, pull up the covers and drop off to sleep.
Unless, of course, your bedroom is an uninviting mess.
A poorly chosen paint color you would rather forget, an uncomfortable rug underfoot and the glare of streetlights outside are just some of the problems that can conspire to create a room you would rather avoid — the opposite of an ideal environment for deep sleep.
“Our bedroom environment is probably the most modifiable factor that can influence our sleep health,” said Natalie Dautovich, an assistant professor of psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University and the environmental fellow for the National Sleep Foundation. “There are things we can do to improve the bedroom that will help us to fall asleep more easily, return to sleep when we wake up during the night and stay asleep until our desired wake time.”
Specifically, “the ideal bedroom environment is dark, quiet and cool — very cavelike, in a sense,” Dautovich said.
But by adding comfort and a feeling of security, we can do much better than a cave. For tips on how to design a restful bedroom, we consulted designers and scientists.
Choose calm colors
When your objective is to create a comforting environment, the bedroom is not the place to experiment with dazzling patterns or bold colors, such as lime green or fiery orange.
“I like to make bedrooms super calm,” said Timothy Godbold, an interior designer in Southampton, New York, who favors a crisp palette of whites and light grays with few, if any, pops of bright color. “My clients tend to be super busy people who work a lot, so when they go to bed, they want to clear their minds.”
Mark Cunningham, an interior designer in New York, also prefers a tightly controlled color palette. “A lot of times they’re kind of monochromatic,” he said of the bedrooms he designs. “I think it’s a nice relief — and retreat — to go into a serene bedroom.”
That doesn’t mean light colors are the only option. Dark colors can be equally inviting, so long as you choose neutrals and stick with them.
Refresh the walls
The easiest way to surround yourself in a calming color is with a fresh coat of paint. But in a bedroom, many designers instead opt for a soft wallcovering.
For one San Francisco home, Alison Pickart, a Bay Area designer, created a bedroom with walls upholstered in gray silk velvet. “For me, bedrooms always need to feel super cozy, and I always love to layer textures,” she said.
But the look and feeling of velvet isn’t its only asset — it also helps keep the room