Bedroom colour: beautiful palette ideas
A guide to creating the perfect bedroom colour scheme by Madeleine Lee, creative Director of Swedish Interior Design.
The bedroom should be a sanctuary - your personal space, where you dream and sleep and prepare to face the world for another day! Colour is vital for helping to create the right kind of bedroom atmosphere. Here are my top four colour palettes for the bedroom…
Red bedrooms
Red bedrooms are nurturing, encompassing, warm, a sanctuary to keep you safe. Red is a good colour to make a bedroom feel cosy and intimate. I would usually recommend the warmer shades of red; nothing too bright…Tuscan red, dark red or rich terra cotta are all wonderfully rich, warm earthy colours that look great in a chalky paint. A wash on a plaster walls is a great way to create a shabby chic look, which can create a rustic plain plaster look or a modern industrial feel, depending on how you accessorise. Accents of moss green and ochre in a red-walled bedroom will help keep the colours earthy and organic.
Yellow bedrooms
Yellow bedrooms are uplifting, cheery, open and sunny, and if you choose the right shades they can be warming during the cold months. Strong bold yellows make a fabulous statement and popular subtle pastel yellows make a warm yet neutral backdrop. Yellow is also a good colour for livening up smaller bedrooms, little offices and rooms where there isn’t much natural light. Accentuate with harmonious yellow colour accents to add to the sunny feel.
Blue bedrooms
Blue bedrooms are cool and open and full of possibility. This colour palette is extraordinarily versatile. Go bold with deep sea blues or go light with soft pastels. Your choice of paint finish will allow you to play with the way the light reflects on your blues. I love the range from ecospaints.com which is organic and solvent-free and has huge range of finishes including Super Chalky Matt. Whichever shade of blue you go for, try mixing with accessorories of white and even lilac.
White bedrooms
White bedroom palettes offer clarity and freshness, bringing light into all corners of the room. Often the most popular ‘go to’ choice, a coat of fresh white paint can really breathe new life into a bedroom and serve as a fantastic canvas for your design ethos. Whites are great in a very light room to further reflect the natural colour tones inspired in the room. But remember there are many, many shades of white... Bright white is often too stark. So think about white as the base tone to which you will add a top note that will inform the rest of the design in the bedroom. Think of white as white with another colour in it, be it a blue-white, grey-white, pink-white or grey-white etc. Look to the colours of your soft furnishings and bed linen to help decide on the white that’s best for your bedroom.
And finally, here’s my paint colour choosing tip: always paint colour samples on all of the walls in your bedroom and then look at them during different times of the day to see how the light changes the shades on the different walls.
Madeleine Lee is creative Director of Swedish Interior Design. www.swedishinteriordesign.co.uk
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