8 Ideas For A Beautiful Winter Bedroom

Create a super luxurious, indulgent and inviting bedroom this winter with these tipsfor style-drivenwinter bedrooms.

Add luxury with an excess of fabric – let curtains fall into puddles on the floors, or pile up cushions and throws.Think sumptuous, sensual fabrics. This season’s velvets and damasks in jewel colours, British florals or Arts and Crafts patterns work deliciously in bedrooms. Go for luxurious damasks on one wall or an over-the-top print behind the bed. Bedrooms don’t have to fit the mood of the rest of the house. They can have a totally different personality.

Indulge your fantasies. Bedrooms are the most private area of a house, a place where you can run riot. Want a jungle theme? Or an intimate, 18th-century boudoir? Just do it.

Want something ultra glam?Mix dark colours with metallics for a sexy, grown-up bedroom.Bring a winter neutrals look to life by funking up textured wood furniture and chunky ecru knits with brass accents.

Need colour inspiration? Go for restful colours. This season’s greens, deep blues or greys are soft on the eye – white is always right too. A limited colour palette creates a more soothing room. Otherwise, apop of a vibrant hue can be a quick fix to refresh and uplift a space. For a bedroom, think layers of decorative pillows or a chromatic throw. Or take a bolder leap and paint the walls a new colour.

Prefer the dark side?Dark colours work beautifullyin small rooms, making them feel alluring and exclusive.

Take inspiration from these decadent bedroom decorating ideas.

1. HOT FLASH

Always in style, a flash of metallic can up the glamour wattage anywhere in the house, but it has a very special place in the boudoir. Metallicscan also give a contrasting hard texture to the room’s soft fabrics. Unless you want a full-on showbiz vibe, use gold, silver or bronze sparingly – a little can go a long way. That said, metallics can offset an overly neutral or Scandi interior, adding a little oomph when spacesget that bit too refined.

Without its über-bold gold metallic headboard, this room at the Hotel Borgo Nuovo in Milan would be tasteful, but a tinge pedestrian. Metallics can provide a fabulous focal point.

2.LIGHT WORK

Bedrooms are intimate and personal and there’s nothing sexier than the right lighting. It truly changes the energy and feel of a space.

Plan for a bedroom to have two lighting schemes – one with down or spot lights for function, such as choosing outfitsor putting on make-up, and anotherfor ambient, atmospheric illumination. Use wall fittings, bedside lights or spotson a dimmer to create clusters of light and a relaxing environment.

Bedside lamps don’thave to sit on a side table – these pendant drop lights are practical,but provide a stylish, sexy alternativeat The Norman Tel-Aviv designed by David d’Almada.

There’s probably nowhere more important to get lighting right than in the bedroom – too little and it won’t work, too much and it kills the vibe. And here,of course, it’s all about creating mood.

Lighting can make such a huge impact to a room and it’s also easy to take with you if you move.

Below, statement lighting adds drama to an understated interior and draws attention to the ornate mouldings in this Victorian house in London.

3.FINDING HEADSPACE

Introduce softness. Too many hard surfaces create a noisier space, so muffle sound with padded headboards and soft fabrics and furnishings.

Get on board with the increasing trend for unusual headboard ideas. More than in any other room, bedrooms are about getting textures and tactile qualities right. The feel of different materials is all-important here – textures also change the acoustics of a room to make it softer and more user-friendly.

For headboards, go for a soft wool or a sumptuous velvet, then you have the contrasting textures against crisp white sheets, which looks good and feels amazing.

This headboard (below) proves that neutral doesn’t always have to mean plain. Although it’s a romantic shape, the light grey breaks up the pattern on walls, cushions and bed linen.

Think outside the box for where to lay your head – a headboard doesn’t have to be square or padded, even carpets hung behind the bed can provide a soft area. Alter London can build a bespoke headboard of your design, with prices starting at approx £525 for a single bed.

Featured in a room at Hotel Henriette Paris, the headboard below is a vintage leather gym mat hungon simple hooks behind the bed.

4.OLD FLAME

During the winter, nothing feels quiteas indulgent as a fireplace in the bedroom – the perfect excuse to stay there all day.

The ultimate luxury is a real fire. Wood-burning stoves and fires add warmth and ambience to a room like nothing else can. Bedrooms needn’t be excluded from having a fire as long as the space allows. A built-in wall-mounted wood-burner can create an interesting, less traditional look; prices start at approx £1,000 from Stovax.

For those with period details in their home, opening up the fireplace can make a huge difference to the space and addsa punctuation stop in an interior. Burn different woods, such as fragrant pine, to add a heady scent to the room.

An interior as pared back as this – a 200-year-old blacksmith’s workshop in Copenhagen that belongs to Noma restaurant co-owner René Redzepi – can take a dramatic wood-burning stove.

5.OOH LA LA

Indulge your inner Marie Antoinette with something French, fun and sexy. The classic curvy lines of Louis XV beds and chairs have been in style for centuries. Modernise the Rococo look by addinga bold French floral, rather than agirlie one, to walls or cushions – ora contemporary toile to keep the look punchy.

Limit the palette to the palest greys, blues or pinks, with stronger flashes of darker shades – deep blues, hot pink – to add some ballast. Other touches (though perhaps best not used all at once) include studded padding with everything, damask walls, dramatic silk drapes that create pools of fabric on the floor, gilded mirrors and the biggest, most opulent chandelier you can find.

6.THROW OVER

Mixing textures is a great wayto give dimension and add sensuality to a bedroom. Rich woods, marbleand mixed-metal accessories are a great way to add movement and soul to a space.

Textiles can add instant drama and soften all-important bedroom acoustics – a room that sounds plush feels plush. Many designers change looks according to the season, adding thick rugs to wooden floors and heavier silk or velvet curtains at windows.

Cushions, throws and pillows up the snuggle-factor and also convert the room instantly froma summer space to one that’s autumn-ready.

In winter, we naturally want to cosy-up the home and the simplest and most effective way of doing this is to add warm throws. Faux fur is good. Change the cushions too, from summer linens to cosy alpaca, velvet or wool. Limit the colour palette, vary textures and layer fabrics to achieve more interest in a neutral room. Rugs and throws are the most cost-effective way to alter a look.

Bedrooms can take dramatic colour schemes that would drown less intimate rooms. Here, in this scheme created by Jo Berryman Studio, a riot of different fabrics and designs – metallics, silk, wool, brocades and lace – is pulled together by a punch of hot pink in the chair and the curtain.

7.CHALET CHIC

A touch of Alpine glamour can work well in bedrooms. The basic principles are to keep materials natural and neutral – scrubbed or bleached timber floors and walls, pale colours, rawwood furniture, soft white chairs or sofas if you have room. Then layer up with textures to create a cosy scheme – soft wool throws, cashmere cushions, animal skins on exposed floors...

This Somerset barn conversion features floors made from old scaffolding boards bleached and scrubbed to give an Alpine-tastic touch. The reindeer throw completes the look.

Lighting is important too – as it always is in bedrooms – use soft side lamps and lots of candles or tea lights. For true authenticity on a snowy morning, light a fire.

Bert’s Box at The Pig Hotel in Hampshire features reclaimed-oak wall cladding, which creates a cosy cabin feel. Use the same material on floors to enhance the effect.

8.DARKAND SULTRY

The trend for dark interiors is here to stay – and where better to experiment with moody looks than the bedroom.

Deeper shades, such as Farrow & Ball’s Pitch Black, can make bedrooms really dramatic, but also cosy. Having dark walls means your views, accessories or artwork become the focus of the room. They make homeware come alive.

If you need to add relief to deep grey or navy walls, lighten the mood with white bed linen or metallic lamps. Think of textures too – velvets and leather work well with these colours.

Strong, sultry navy blues, mixed with the clean lines of wood furniture, can give a muscular vibe, asin this Ace Hotel New Orleans room below.