Colours and Rooms - 3 -Bedrooms

On goes the musing about colours and rooms. This time, I want to think about bedrooms and their colours. Question of tastes, as usual.

 It is amazing, how often people do not take the care they take in decorating their living room into their privacy area - which, after all is a very important one. It is like the person who does not care to put the butter on its proper dish when alone, but instead eats out of the package, to avoid "work".... I have seen installations for sleeping, which were little better than a dumping room or an additional attic, without any care for beauty or comfort. Again: a question of tastes???

The most important choice in colours is - in my humble opinion -  for a soft and cosy scheme. As always I advocate not more than two colours, with an additional third one for fun and lightness of touch. Naturally it depends also on the country you live in! A white and cool blue bedroom is wonderful in Greece, but can be terribly uncomfortable in grey Brussels and its rainy weather. Beautiful but a little bit daring is the soft powdery brigade of old roses and some grey - with white bedsheets a truly unbeatable combination. Or warm green and a lovely Toile de Jouy. Or simple white and grey, with a touch of soft reds, or greens. I would strongly object to too intensive colours for a bedroom, it is not calming but too exhausting to wake up every day in a neon orange nightmare.

To make it even more cosy, why not put a nice carpet on the floor, preferably in a natural material and perhaps fluffy, to have the luxury of getting out of bed on a cold winter morning and not have your feet freeze immediately. Another great asset is a soft throw over your bed - which can double in a very cold nights as additional blanket. Preferably in a calm colour and soft material - a friend of mine has some fur on her bed and it looks stunning.

Another thing: I personally have never liked to have a bed directly put to the wall - it is cold and uncomfortable. As a child my mother used to hang nice cotton curtains on the walls next to our beds, which gave it always the feeling of additional cosiness.I still do it today.
Bedlinen is another thing - for me there is nothing other than white - crisp, lovely white. Best is still Egyptian cotton, the thread is fine and high. It always looks fresh, wonderful inviting and gets better the more you wash and use it. I have succumbed to coloured bedlinen in Ikea many a time, but then I have always regretted it - anyway, it was always for the children, because I myself hate multicoloured bedlinen. I much prefer having a crisp white duvet and putting a lovely wool wrap on top of if for the colour splash.

I remember vividly the wonderful feeling of simple crisp cotton sheets in the small Italian hotel in Grado, Italy, where I spent a couple of weeks with my parents in the 1970ies. It was so simple and yet so comfortable - a simple white room, no schnick-schnack, a simple metal bed, with a cushion, white sheets and a simple wool blanket, like a monks cell. Part of the fun was, for certain, my brother and me sneaking of to the roof terrace of the Pensione and playing between the white long bed sheets, which were hanging there to dry in the lovely June Italian summer.
Anyway, the idea of ironing should not keep you from using good stuff, because if you take a little care in how to hang it properly to dry, you just have to fold it firmly and it looks the part.

Another big No No is plastic and polyester stuff - please don´t. Ever. Not only is it not comfortable for sleeping -it is horrible sticky and gives you a rash, cooking in your own juice ... brr. Out with it, immediately!

In the end it is so simple. If you get the ideas, i.e. the ingredients right, than you do not have to work a lot for it - it goes alone and long way. I should write a post about breakfast in bed.... Always looking for that ideal tray for writing, having a cup of tea and a telephone on it...