6 Essentials: Calming Bedroom to Restore & Unwind

Your bedroom is more than the place you end one day and begin another. It’s your place of refuge. Calm. Relaxation. It’s a sanctuary and the only place you come back to restore for the following day. There are a lot of facets when it comes to what encompasses a calming bedroom, and at times even thinking about how to make a space calm can feel counterintuitive when you’ve got other things on. Am I meant to feel rushed or anxious when deciding what I need to do, buy, and create a relaxing environment? I’ve been there.

How to create a calming bedroom

There are small wins, and big ones, you can make depending on where you are in decorating your home with little pressure to do them all at once. As you’ll notice, later on, even the finer details such as the bulbs you use or how full your wardrobe is can have an impact on how calming your bedroom looks and feels. As we become more introspective and think about our environment, accompanied by the cliche of a Springtime clear out, spending time getting the room in order where we spend a third of our life feels like a good place to start.

Now, you strike me as the type who has a thing for interiors. You care about how your space looks, and how if at all it has an impact on your well being. It takes less effort to think about how to make a home look more bountiful and aesthetically pleasing while forgetting if it does anything to our other senses. While of course, we want our bedroom to look the part, it’s important that we pay close attention to what else we can do to evoke a relaxed state that adds to a good night’s sleep and creates a calming atmosphere.

Choose zen colours that put you at ease

Ever wondered what a difference colour makes? As we look to the bedroom as a place of refuge, it feels necessary to question whether if how we’ve decorated the room is either helping us or hindering us. It’s become a hot topic and scientific one at that, research suggests that a room with certain colours may be interfering with our sleep while others lure us to sleep. If this means going back to the drawing board, we’ve got you.

The general rule of thumb is to avoid bright, glossy colours and go for more muted colours for a calming bedroom that actually helps you to sleep. More specifically muted colours such as Cinder Rose from Farrow & Ball, a shade of pink that contains less yellow pigments you would usually find in most pink paints, creating a more romantic, dusky feel in a room. As well as shades of blue, Borrowed Light, which we closely correlate with nature and are guaranteed to evoke a sense of calm.

Add soft textures to your bedroom

Designing a space that’s relaxing is as much to do with how it looks, as it is to do with how it feels. Embracing fabrics and textures in your bedroom is a key ingredient to the recipe for creating a soothing, tranquil bedroom. There are so many opportunities to bring textures into your bedroom that sit outside of the bed, although I’ll touch on the best types of fabrics for your bed a little later. To set the tone, placing a soft area rug such as the cosy meets luxe Genna Rug by the side of your bed offers both practical warmth and a super-soft landing for when you wake up of a morning.

Now, if ever you wanted to prevent sleep, a rather strange quest but stay with me, keeping your windows bare would do the trick. Your windows, airflow, and natural light play an important role when it comes to the comfortability and snugness of your bedroom.

Choosing your curtains should depend on how you prefer to wake up in the morning. For example, if you prefer to be in sync with natures rhythm and wake up when the sun does, opt for sheer voile curtains or if you’d rather wake up on your own terms, go for these velvet lined curtains that, once closed, block out the light and ensure a peaceful room.

Go for the relaxing scents that help you sleep

When I smell coconut? I’m on holiday. Cinnamon? I’m getting ready for Christmas. Scent can take you back to precious memories, and there’s a science to explain it. Our brains process a smell through the olfactory bulb which is directly linked to the emotion centre in your brain, meaning specific smells signal a specific response or revive a particular memory.

I’d say scents get less attention than they deserve, considering the positive effects they can have on our sleep, mood, and overall wellbeing. Take Lavender as an example, a beautiful fragrant smell that has an abundance of benefits when it comes to easing anxiety and agitation, as well as slowing down the nervous system known for its flight-flight-freeze response. Vanilla is said to help stabilize our heart rate and blood pressure, whereas Jasmine promotes a deeper sleep with less movement and of better quality. And let’s be honest in the context of fragrances, you can never be too vanilla.

A particular favourite of mine to wind down and restore is the Neom Wellbeing Pod with the Perfect Night Sleep essential oil. The ceramic exterior cover looks beautiful, with an option to switch on a warm light offering an ambient glow. It also comes with a timer meaning you can drift off to the land of nod without needing to think about anything else. That said, if aromatherapy isn’t your thing, putting a bunch of your favourite flowers in your bedroom will work wonders. Visually beautiful and smells amazing.

Get the balance right with lighting

It wouldn’t be an understatement to say our relationship to light is important. It regulates our circadian rhythm and affects the production of melatonin, an essential hormone for winding down and getting to sleep. Our exposure to light, especially specific types of light, can affect when we go to sleep, how well we sleep, and how we function the following day.

Now that we’ve covered curtains, let’s look at what we can do with the lighting in your bedroom. When it comes to choosing your bulbs, it’s essential that they are a warm, soft white and range between 2000 – 3000 K (kelvin range). Bulbs in this kelvin range, bearing in mind they can vary between 1,000 to 10,000 K, has a soft yellow tint that adds a gorgeous cosy feeling to a space and has been shown to signal to the brain when it is time to sleep. Where possible, it’s best to use lamps with a smart bulb or strip lights with dimmable light rather than a central light for ambient lighting.

Take a leaf out of Kondo’s book

When a space is tidy and clutter-free our minds shift and immediately feel at ease. The idea of a decluttered space might hark back to minimalism. A style I know isn’t everyone’s favourite, however, when it comes to your bedroom there are more reasons than one on why adopting a minimal perspective in your bedroom is key for designing a space made for relaxation.

The words of Marie Kondo, a Japanese organising consultant, singlehandedly set of a decluttering craze around the world with her book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Her techniques and expertise have transformed the way many of us live; decluttering our home to help declutter our minds. Keeping a hold on to what you love (not like or for nostalgic reasons) and respecting what you own takes on a new form when you apply Kondo’s methods.

Every room in your home should spark joy, and where better to start than your bedroom: Where clothes pile up, bedside tables get cramped, and shoes are left out. Caveat, when you Kondo your home I’d expect moments of anxiety. It’s possible that by the end of it you may end up with a bare room, and wardrobe. Alice Wignall, writer at ELLE, lived to tell the tale of what happens when you throw away your clothes and it’s worth a read if anything even for a little nudge.

Now that you’ve chosen the items you love, again emphasising you must love what you keep, investing in discreet and stylish storage with limiting space goes a long way when it comes to storing and organising your pieces. A modular wardrobe system gives you the flexibility to design furniture that works for you and makes accumulating clothes, shoes, and accessories less likely. Giving you the option to choose the amount of storage you want to add in, based on how much to want to keep. Nifty.

The most important ingredient of all? Your bed

Real talk: You can do everything to make your bedroom a relaxing and inviting space but if your bed is uncomfortable, it’s not going to happen. Having a mattress that allows air to move freely, rather than a memory foam known to trap heat, makes the world of difference. And it’s for that reason, I love the Simba Hybrid Pro Mattress. With its temperature regulation and super comfortable spring pressure, it’s clear every effort has been made to provide you with the best sleep experience.

Accompany with a beautiful Organic Cotton duvet set or the Pin Tucked Velvet Linen bed set and you’ll be set for life when it comes to restorative sleep that prepares you for the day ahead.

And finally, because there are days when I need reminding; keep laptops, tablets, and phones outside the bedroom. Making it the only room (maybe ever?) where only you, your bed, your favourite belongings, and your books exist. A subtle nod to escaping the fast-paced world for a moment, or hours.

It’s these small wins. Changes. And perspective on your bedroom that can transform many areas of your life that you’d least expect. From personal experience when you become more mindful of the space around you, whether by bringing nature-inspired elements into a room or adopting a smarter way of living with the help of technology, your buying habits shift. Becoming more intentional with what you buy, thinking about how it’ll add to the space and its possible impact on wellbeing.

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Photo Credits: 1-2. Emily Henderson 3-4. Emily Henderson 5-6. Ingredients LDN 7-8. Bed Threads 9-10. Studio Mcgee 11-12. El Mueble 13-14. Heidi Caillier