Bedroom Interior Design

I always laugh when I see people say the first thing to do is measure the room, or decide on colors. Quite frankly I thing bedroom interior design is a lot more involved than that, and a lot of thinking and preparation needs to be done before you get to picking colors or measuring floor space.

Determining the function of the room is probably more important. OK, this might seem strange, you're probably thinking it's a kids room, or a master bedroom, so that must be the function, but I don't think so. A kids bedroom could be specific to a certain age, are they at an age where next year the room needs to be redecorated all over again because their interests have changed.

Is the master bedroom for a single person living alone, or a parent with children, or for a couple? These are the sorts of questions that help determine where you start in bedroom interior design. Let me give another example, an eligible batchelor might have a very different use for the room than a happily married couple. Laugh if you want, but this is serious business.

Most likely a couple with a growing family will be wanting a place to relax, to get away from things, to talk privately about their fears, hopes, and what they as a couple are looking for in their lives. Sleeping may be one of the main reasons they use the room, but I'm sure they'll want to relax watching TV as well, or perhaps a private spa bath in the corner. By contrast an eligible batchelor may spend a considerable amount of time in the bedroom, perhaps with a friend :-) and he may want additional furniture like a massage table.

Knowing how the room is going to be used gives much more scope for designing the perfect room. Once the use of the room is known then we have a much better idea of the sorts of colors and furnishings that need to be thought about. And that's why I think determining the use is so important. Prior to considering the use of the room we might have started with the color, and then discovered it didn't really suit the purpose.

As I mentioned above, I believe the color scheme decided on for any room should only be done after the purpose of the room has been identified, and in this module I'm going to assume this has been done. We are of course talking about bedrooms, so it's highly likely the purpose will mostly include sleeping and relaxation.

Assuming this is the case, choosing relaxing colors isn't too difficult. You'll be told that reds make bad color choices, that they're angry colors, whereas blues are relaxing colors. In fact recent research has thrown this concept up on it's head. It is in fact not correct. See, what happened is that a bunch of researchers many years ago measured the heart rates of people who were shown certain colors, and based on this, they determined that red is bad, and blue is good.

The problem with their research is that they were showing people sheets of colored paper, in complete isolation from what we see in the real world. Consequently a lot of people will not have red in their bedrooms, but don't understand why they are still feeling stressed and angry. The answer lies in the intensity of the color, not in the color itself. Most recently we've come to understand that pale reds are every bit as relaxing as pale blues, and conversely deep blues can be just as stressful as deep reds.

So the secret to producing a relaxing room seems to be in adpopting lighter hues and pastels of any color. This also explains why dark toned bedrooms of any color seem to aggravate growing teenagers and make them even more intolerable then they might normally be.

Children's bedrooms painted in bold bright colors might also be contributing to excitement and lack of sleep. With this in mind, choosing lighter hues seems very appropriate for the bedroom, whereas choosing brighter colors for play areas, rumpus rooms, etc is such a great idea.

A final consideration to choosing colors, most phychologists agree, the color that makes me relax is very likely going to be different from the color range that makes you relax. We should still choose lighter hues if our goal is to relax, but we needn't all pick blue. A very significant percentage of people find green, peach, orange, yellow, or beige to be more relaxing then blue. The next time your local hardware store clerk tells you red isn't relaxing, you tell them what you've read right here.