It All Revolves Around the Bed
The clue is in the name, 'Bedroom'. The room must serve the bed, and the bed is the single element of the room that cannot be compromised. That said, we understand not every bedroom is equal and sometimes the shape or size of a room can restrict your options when it comes to picking your bed. So what considerations need to be made when you decide upon your new bed? How big can you go? Or should you be thinking about dialling it down on size?
Room to Circulate
Flow is an exceptionally important factor to consider in the design of an interior. We must think about the accessibility of the most used elements of a room. In this case, that would be the bed.
By setting aside movement space on each side of your bed you give yourself literal and metaphoric breathing room. For a restful nights sleep the last thing you want is to feel trapped. Open space helps relieve this claustrophobia. 50cm - 60cm clearance around your bed will do the trick, giving you enough room to comfortably walk up to your bed without bumping your knees or shuffling your way through. Better still, if space allows a 75cm clearance would be optimal - not floating in free space, and not an afterthought. Although all of that space sounds very appealing, we would always recommend prioritising space for the bed than on the clearance room, so long as you can still maintain that ample 'wiggle room'. When it comes to your bedside tables tucked alongside your bed give them a bit of breathing room on one side too, close to your bed but spaced from the other furniture in your room.
Stay Significant
Big rooms demand big beds. Without picking furniture or upholstery that matches the scale of your room smaller pieces become overwhelmed by the great empty space. As the bed will be the most significant piece in the room it should be set against the largest wall (whether that be the longest or highest) to help with the proportions and anchor the space.
Your bedroom is your sanctuary. If there are items in your bedroom that are not serving you, remove them. As your escape from the noise and chaos of the world, it is one of the most important rooms to be able to keep clutter free. Removing anything excess from your bedroom shifts the significance to the bed. Don't allow the clutter to control the space; prioritise the bed, and everything else that is necessary can fit around it.
For a 'Bijoux Bedroom'
For the best nights sleep a vast, spacious bed is the best antidote. But adversely, feeling cramped with an oversized bed in an undersized room is far from a relaxing experience. If your bedroom is on the 'bijoux' size, there are some neat tricks you can employ to make a smaller space appear less restrictive - without having to sacrifice your big bed dreams.
One approach to the 'large-bed little-room' problem is to reduce the visual weight of the bed. Think slender, sharper details on a brightly painted bed. In a smaller room these will be a lot less imposing than a thicker, heavier upholstered bed. Something like our Out for the Count 3/4 Poster Bed is a brilliant example of a suitable answer for smaller spaces. These visually lighter beds keep the room from feeling stifled or crowded. A clever bit of interior design can also help to build illusions of depth, height, and space; from the colours you use, the vertical lines in a space, accent walls, and tricks for maximising brightness.
It is all Relative
The items in your interior are never working in isolation; desks and chairs, tables and rugs, artwork and sideboards. Beds follow these same set of rules. Your beds and your bedsides have to relate to each other as much as every other piece in your bedroom, and part of that relationship is scale. When you opt for bringing in grander chests of drawers your bed will need to work harder to not become dwarfed by this other dominating piece. On the other hand a larger or more monolithic bed will require any of the complimentary pieces in the room to be able to hold their own, or they risk looking out of place.
In Summary...
Your bed is a critical investment and one you need to get right. We have summarised our best tips to help ensure you make the right decision for your sleeping sanctuary.
- As an easy rule of thumb if you have a room above 3m x 3.5m you should go as big as possible, and any size is an option
- A less than 3m x 3m room and a Kingsize bed is as big as you should go
- Never give yourself less than 50cm room to move around your bed
- If your room is big, your bed needs to be too
- Declutter your bedroom to give yourself more space to breath
- There are plenty of clever tricks to make your room feel bigger than it really is
- Consider the style of bed; a small bed will feel bigger if it is upholstered, and a big bed can feel smaller if it has more of an open frame
