My Bedroom Inspiration Moodboard

As you all know, we moved into our flat last October and we have been a bit too busy getting to grips with being new parents to really get stuck into the decorating. Every room in the flat needs a total overhaul to take it from being a bland, characterless magnolia box to being something that we feel reflects our style and our personality as a little family. We decorated the nursery and the livingroom before Matylda arrived and until recently that is all we had got round to. But a couple of weekends ago we tackled the hallway (I’ll do a separate post about that in the coming weeks) and now I have a massive smile on my face every time I walk through the front door. This is such a refreshing change as I previously wanted to sob when I saw the magnolia walls and the red carpet. Next on our list of rooms to tackle is our bedroom and I can’t wait to get stuck in. I’ve known how I was going to decorate for months already and I had great fun making my bedroom inspiration moodboard.

I was inspired by the styling experiment I did with Tesco back in April as I really loved the fresh, clean and invigorating combination of black, white and yellow and I thought that this would make for a really great design scheme for our bedroom. I had it all planned out as you can see from the moodboard above. I decided to paint the room mostly white with a small yellow accent wall and another wall papered in the gorgeous Rainy Days wallpaper designed by Lilesadi for Photowall. I used the bedding, the throw and the clock that I got from Tesco in my design and I added a few key pieces that had caught my eye such as the Sillerup rug from IKEA and the PS 2014 wall shelf from IKEA. Then to accessorise I included a few of the products from my shop, including prints from Hey! Holla and accessories from Anthony Hughes.

I was really looking forward to making a start on the bedroom and then something happened that changed my whole plan. I went over to my local B&Q to meet with a rep from Valspar Paint to find our more about their paint range and pick up some paint for the bedroom. However, when I arrived and I was perusing the extensive display of paint colours I was immediately drawn to an amazing shade of blue called Epic Adventure (great name right?). I’ve explained before that dark blue is my all time favourite colour and I absolutely love all the deep inky blues that are around at the moment. So on a crazy whim I decided to abandon my meticulously curated moodboard and months of planning and instead opted to rethink the whole bedroom design in favour of a more elegant and grown up scheme in dark blue. You can see the colours I picked out below.

There was always a nagging little voice inside my head asking if I wouldn’t prefer a blue bedroom and when I saw the new Sainsury’s indigo range that is being released on Monday, I was torn. I was really hoping that I had made the right decision as I didn’t take the time to properly think it through as it was a totally spontaneous decision. Then as if by magic I received some information through from Hammonds regarding the result of a recent bedroom survey they had conducted alongside Karen Haller.

As you will recall I have worked on numerous colour psychology articles with Karen so I was most interested to see what the survey concluded and how Karen interpreted it. Hammonds surveyed 2,000 UK adults and found that the bedroom is the most neglected room in the house when it comes to decorating. Apparently over 60 per cent of those questioned believed that the bedroom is the least important room to decorate because it is the room no one really sees and is only used for sleeping. Only 25 per cent of people recognised that the bedroom is the room where we spend more time than any other and that it is therefore really important to create the right environment for getting a good night’s sleep. When it came to thinking about colour choice, 54 per cent said that making the right colour choice was a priority. However 56 per cent of people said they currently have neutral decor which would suggest that as a nation we lack confidence when it comes to using colour in the bedroom.

Karen believes we see neutral colours as the safe option due to the fear of getting colour wrong. Her advice is: “Trust your natural colour intuition, choosing the right combination of colours will create a space that supports your personality and creates a bedroom that will become your inner sanctuary.” Karen also said “The bedroom is one of the most important rooms in the home as a good night’s sleep has a direct impact on our health and wellbeing. Colour is emotion; it impacts on our mood, feelings and behaviour, so adding a splash of the right colour to our bedrooms can actually help us create a comfortable and relaxing space we love to spend time in”.

[Image above is from the new Indigo range by Sainsbury’s]

Karen actually recommends using blue in the bedroom. She says: “It’s the colour of the mind, using the right tone of blue soothes and calms, helping you to switch off, aiding a restful night’s sleep. Green is another good colour choice as it can be calming and relaxing, as it relates to harmony and balance. “The one colour I’d definitely advise against in the bedroom is yellow because its strong energy and vibrancy can cause the nervous system to stay active, which is why many hotels avoid yellow bedrooms so their guests don’t wake up tired and irritated”. Phew, it looks like I had a narrow escape and I did make the right decision after all. So I’m glad I trusted my natural colour intuition and opted for blue. I get enough sleepless nights as it is so a yellow bedroom would not have been a good option for me. As soon as we’ve decorated the bedroom I’ll do a post about it here so you can all see how it turns out. Fingers crossed I can pull it off.