Using Natural Elements in Bedroom

In most homes, bedrooms tend to be on the quiet side, with the “wow factor” left to more public spaces like living and dining rooms. But there’s no law that says a bedroom can’t also be high impact (and if there is, well, rules are meant to be broken). In fact, sometime bright, mood-elevating splashes of color are just what the doctor ordered. There is, though, a smart way to go about creating a bedroom that’s fun and lighthearted. After all, you don’t want to turn up the volume so high that it’s impossible to sleep.

Just about every room benefits from a touch of nature, whether it’s a living, breathing houseplant, a landscape painting, or just a collection of interesting rocks arranged on a shelf. Natural elements symbolize growth and renewal and are great reminders that life is cyclical: Just as the seasons go from dreary to light, lives marked by misfortune also inevitably brighten. But not enough with the metaphors. Nature is a treasure trove of beautiful things! Why not borrow some of them to give a style to your king size platform beds?

There are a couple of ways to go about bringing the outdoors in. One is to borrow from the environment that surrounds your queen metal bed frame. That’s pretty much what I did when I created a bedroom for a Native American couple in Flagstaff, Arizona. I basically went “shopping” right outside the family’s door in order to build some of the furnishings in the room. I let the gorgeous landscape serve as my inspiration. Flying into Arizona, I was taken by dramatic shifts in landscape, from the flat red earth to the dusty brown canyons to the snowcapped peaks, and knew that I wanted to somehow capture that same feeling in this wonderful couple’s room. I also wanted to draw on the family’s Native American heritage, which I knew was an important part of its identity. Luckily, of course, my two sources of inspiration were not incompatible because so much of Native American symbolism is grounded in an appreciation for the earth.

If you want to use nature as your inspiration, you don’t necessarily have to be literal. While I did scatter some bleached starfish, shells, and sand dollars around, everything else in the room is meant to evoke water and sand. For instance, I painted the walls a cool, cool turquoise reminiscent of the Caribbean sea, and hand painted organic forms that resembled seaweed or coral. The rest of the room is done in varying sand tones with some deeper browns and blues for accents. There’s enough color in the room to keep it from looking washed out, but because the colors largely fall within just two families, blue and brown, it still has a relaxing quality – just like the sand the sea.