Bedroom Décor for a Good Night Sleep

Having trouble sleeping?  The layout, décor and general environment of your bedroom may be affecting your sleep. Here are some of our top tips for creating a room to encourage a really good nights sleep.

Declutter for Slumber

A good tidy and clean can be very therapeutic as a cluttered room can have a big effect on your sleep.  Clear out your clutter and stop using the ‘floordrobe’ is an excellent start however, it isn’t just ‘out of sight, out of mind’ that matters. All those boxes and general stuff under your bed could be subconsciously disturbing your sleep. So, channel your inner Marie Kondo (she of the humble house tidying and folding) and start ‘Kondoing” your bedroom to rid of the clutter to ensure that all the things in your room ‘spark joy’ in your life!  Perhaps you should give prior warning to your partner for undertaking this!

By removing all items from under your bed you will allow the air to flow freely. You will also remove the concept that you are literally sleeping on top of your clutter.  If you have a bed with inbuilt storage only place what is really needed and in a tidy fashion.

The space in which we live should be for the person we are becoming now, not for the person we were in the past.”
Marie Kondō, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

Dreamy Colours and Comfy Rooms

Choose your colours wisely!  Green is calming, yellow invigorating, red stimulating.  Colours and patterns really affect our moods when we’re awake so if the last thing you see before sleep is a confusion of colour and shapes common sense dictates that they will also affect our sleep.

Keep your fabrics soft and comfortable. No scratchy bedsheets and of course, the softest most snuggly duvet which keeps both you and your partner cosy, comfy and cool!

Award winning Hampshire Interior Designer, Karen Chapman from Renaissance Interiors has some sound advice:

“Create a room which is kind to your senses.  Think of your placing carpets and rugs to provide something soft under foot especially at either side of the bed.  Bamboo carpet and rugs are very soft underfoot and also kind to the environment and allergy sufferers.

Use Soft furnishings to diffuse sound and add curtains or blinds to aid with privacy and black out blinds if a particularly light sleeper. Avoid eyelet curtains in a bedroom if you are a light sleeper as they allow lots of light bleed. Keep curtains high and wide.  Skimpy curtains will also allow light to bleed in around their edges and also they encroach on the natural light during the day.

Hive or duette blinds are particularly good for both light and heat because their honeycomb core retains heat in cold weather and keeps outside heat at bay in hot weather.  They are available as dimout but aesthetically fold to a very small stack, therefore doesn’t impact on your other window treatments and looks more streamlined.  Roller blinds look ugly but these type of blind s are far more aesthetically pleasing and can do so much more for your sleeping environment than just give you privacy.

I love working with colour and don’t shy away from them in the bedroom I simply use a softer palette keeping bold intense colours for accent colours. If you like bold colours, plums, aubergines and blues are great for bedrooms but if you’d prefer something really zingy put it behind your headboard so that it’s not directly in front of you when you’re sleeping. 

I particularly like the current trend for coral which works so well with other pinks mustards, teals and greys.  Although this sounds colourful the grey helps to tone it down creating a stylish yet calming scheme.

Think about the position of your furniture and maximise the flow of the room from door to bed.   If you have the space introduce a small sofa to create relaxing space for a morning coffee or read.”

Ditch the Electronics

We live in an age of the connected consumer, we are always ‘on’.  The Ofcom Communication Market Report, 2018 reported that people spend the total of 1 day a week online (more than twice as much as in 2007) with 78% of UK adults use an internet-connected smartphone.

It’s all too tempting to take our tech into the bedrooms, to finish off a just a little bit more work, catch up on the day’s news or to see what’s trending on Twitter.  Worse still are TV’s in the bedroom where we get caught up on the latest series and before we know it we’re halft way through a big binge!

Swap the tech for a book and keep your current read by your bed. However, keep your bedside table as clear as possible. Having a stack of yet to read page turners has been said to increase anxiety levels.  If each time we go to bed we are reminded of what we have not yet done it can play on our subconscious whilst we sleep.

Ambient Light

It may sound pretty obvious but bright light is functional light, great for dressing and putting on makeup but it is not conducive for a restful sleep. Choose diffused or ambient light which is soft and calming with a warm bulb or coloured shade. Downlighters angled for reading with the switch at hand when you start to drift off are good.

In the summer months we can be found to sleep in tune with nature, resting when the day is over and rising with the sun and the birds.  To help simulate our natural circadian rhythm consider a lamp which will gradually brighten at a given time mimicking sunrise – perfect for the depths of winter when you really can’t have yet another duvet day!

Sleepy Sounds

If after decluttering, tidying, redecorating and declaring your room a heavenly sanctuary you are having difficulties sleeping you could also try self-hypnosis or have gentle soothing music playing quietly to help you drift off.

A sound that evokes an autonomous sensory median response (ASMR), a tingling sensation down the back of the neck can help to soothe and aide sleep.  Some people love ASMR videos on YouTube, some find it just a little bit creepy….we’ll leave you to be the judge of that!

So, in short, tidy up, calm your colour palette and keep your bedroom a room for what it is meant to be used for…sleep.