Tips for upgrading your headboard
Does the thought of a full kitchen or bathroom renovation make you clutch your wallet tighter? Costs for materials, contractors and inevitable structural surprises can often make home improvement projects seem out of reach.
Enter one of the more affordable design trends for 2024: The statement headboard. Yes, that humble piece of furniture at the far end of your bed is getting extra love this year. While headboards can be functional, adding extra support and preventing wall damage, they're most often purely decorative.
Here are ways you can treat your headboard to an upgrade.
1 Opt for arches
Danielle Blundell, the home editor at Apartment Therapy, describes this trendy shape as resembling “the profile of two mountains with a valley in between.” She says it echoes other popular architectural details such as semicircles and scallops.
“Visually, there's something so fresh but also familiar about the peak shape,” Blundell writes in a recent article. “It combines clean lines and sharp angles but still looks soothing, perhaps because it's reminiscent of a form from nature. The slopes can be curved, too, if you want to eliminate the pointed edges entirely and go with a gentler, double arch design.”
2 Go big — really big
Although oversized headboards have been popping up on social media for the last little while, they're evolving in fabric choice and form. “Colourful matte patterns have replaced glossy monotonal textures and shapes have become more complex,” says the British online magazine
Homes & Gardens. “The rectangle has been superseded by curves and free-form asymmetrical pieces that are almost pieces of art in their own right.”
3 Take the long route
Rather than going tall with your headboard, consider going wide. Fabric headboards that extend past the length of the bed will be big this year, according to Cherie Lee, of U.K.-based firm Cherie Lee Interiors. “They create drama and impact, instantly elevating a bedroom space to make it feel that much more luxurious and cosy,” she told Business Insider.
4 Create a custom luxury look
This type of headboard is hyper-personalized, meant to both complement your bedroom's esthetic and embrace modern conveniences. “Custom headboards are extremely versatile — both aesthetically and functionally — which is what makes them so alluring and why they're becoming more popular,” interior designer Megan Prime, co-founder of New Yorkbased JAM Architecture, told Cosmopolitan.
“You can design them to have all the bedside conveniences one could possibly need, including integrated lighting, charging ports, floating nightstands or pullout trays.”