Bedroom Decorating – Using Decorations to Create a Refuge and Sanctuary

To create a bedroom that is distinctively you, and a special place that provides a place in which to escape, is something only you can do. No one can do it as well as you. You know what's important to you, and only you know how different colors and objects affect you.

The bedroom decorating choices that you have available to you are only limited by your imagination. Some people prefer a formal and elegant area, while others prefer a comfortable and homey atmosphere, and still others prefer something somewhere between these two.

In a previous article, Bedroom Decorating – Your Refuge, Your Sanctuary!, I suggested, “Think about a place that has given you great happiness such as a flower garden humming with bees, a beach cottage where you can hear the surf, an isolated mountain retreat beside a vast blue lake, or a secluded path beside a babbling brook.” What theme, or environment, would provide the atmosphere you want to create in your bedroom – a place to escape and relax.

Let’s consider a flower garden buzzing with bees. In order to accomplish this environment, you have many choices. You can paint your walls and/or your ceiling a cheery light sky blue. You can artistically add clouds to the ceiling if you desired. Flowers could be stenciled on one or all of the walls, with or without a picket fence. You can intersperse butterflies, bees and birds among your stenciling and among your knickknacks scattered throughout the room.

Pictures can be chosen to complement this theme. Choices might include flower gardens, butterflies, ferns, birds, etc.

Fabrics can be chosen that bring your theme home. If you make your walls a solid color you may choose to bring the flowers into your sanctuary through the use of fabrics on your bedding, your upholstery, your window dressings and your pillows. If your walls bring the flowers to life using stenciling or wallpaper, you can use pillows to add solid splashes of accent color here and there. As you step into this environment you've created, you might imagine the buzzing of a bee or the whirring of hummingbird wings.

Let’s consider now the beach theme. Again, blue walls and/or ceiling can provide the feel of water and sky. A sandy tone brown carpet could be incorporated to bring the feeling of sand into the room. Seashells, large and small, can be scattered around the room as accent pieces.

White is a good color to bring the beach theme to life. A white picket fence stenciled around the room would be a nice touch, as would white curtains. These both could work together to bring a beach cottage theme to life. Dried flowers work well in this environment to add texture.

Fabrics with large shell prints would work well for pillows. Shell prints can also be incorporated into your bedding, the upholstery and the window dressings. Pictures would be chosen according to interest. Subjects could include shells, lighthouses, sailboats, ships, beach scenes, etc. A careful blending of all these seaside touches works together to create an inviting cottage retreat.

We will now look at creating an isolated mountain retreat. In this theme, you may choose to go with the deeper more intense colors found in a forest – the deep rich greens and browns. A dark brown carpet would give you with the feeling of walking on an organically rich forest floor cushioned with many years of fallen leaves. The walls could be painted a rich shade of blue or green, symbolizing the sky or the foliage that would be found in a mountain retreat. The walls could even be covered with faux logs to provide an even more authentic look of a log cabin.

Pictures may be chosen to work with the environment you're working to create. There are many animal and bird prints that would complement this theme. There are also many pictures that would work including mountain retreats and placid lakes surrounded by mountains and trees.

Fabrics used in this theme would be rustic, masculine or rich, depending on your design. Fabrics can have the patterns of logs, wood or even wood-grain. Or you can choose to go the route of foliage such as trees, ferns or delicate flowers that exist on the forest floor. Flowering trees such as the dogwood would be another decorating theme for you to use. And plaids always work well mixed in with all of these elements. Any of these fabrics can be used to create an intimate mountain retreat in your own home.

When you think about the kind of retreat of sanctuary that you want to create for yourself, what comes to mind? Whatever it is, think about how you can recreate a space of beauty for yourself that brings this dream to life. Then, physically and symbolically go about bringing the elements of your design together to create this special place.