Easy and Affordable Bedroom Design Ideas to Help You Create a More Relaxing Space

Designing a beautiful, relaxing bedroom doesn't have to cost a fortune. In fact, crafting a serene atmosphere is mostly about bringing in design elements like color and texture. Try these tips for making your bedroom a peaceful refuge you'll love coming home to.

Make It Your Own

Your entire house should reflect your personality, but the bedroom, in particular, should be a good fit for its owners. Make it your own by adding personal accents. You might try hanging a statement mirror or other dramatic accent. If you enjoy vintage decor, you can make them look fresh and unique by framing ads from old magazines. Shop at thrift stores and garage sales regularly to freshen your sleep space with vintage vases, planters, and other new finds on the cheap.

Use a Variety of Textures

Rooms need dimension to feel stylish and lived-in. Texture provides a sense that a room is "alive," so tell your story with wall hangings made from yarn or other textural materials. Make your own one-of-a-kind headboard in a cozy fabric or cushiony style. Cover your bed with a quilt or chenille bedspread, and accent it with big, textured throw pillows. Finally, toss a chunky blanket over a chair for a welcoming look that adds dimension.

Build the Perfect Bed

Let's face it: your bed is the reason your bedroom exists. Choose the right bed for your needs, and you've mastered the key to a good night's sleep. Mattresses are available in a vast array of configurations, though queen mattresses are the most common size for most adults. From plush to firm, there's a perfect mattress out there for everyone.

 After you've found your ideal size and comfort level, consider splurging on sheets boasting a high thread count for the ultimate in bedtime luxury. Or keep it budget-friendly by using warm flannel sheets in the winter and cool linen in the warmer months.

Use a Soft Touch

While sharp, modern decor looks nice, it’s not the most relaxing. When you’re trying to create a  tranquil atmosphere, try incorporating the softest materials. You can cover your bed in velvet or another soft fabric. For the ultimate get-away-from-it-all touch, build a simple DIY canopy bed. You can even put soft lighting at your fingertips by installing a dimmer switch. Create a soothing color scheme with paint and accents in natural hues. These cozy additions will help you get into a sleepytime mindset for a restorative rest every night.

Incorporate Nature

Art depicting landscapes and colors plucked straight from nature can be calming and beautiful. Bring a little bit of the outdoors into your bedroom decor by going with green walls and incorporating different shades of the soothing color into your decor. Hang wall art depicting nature scenes or plants. 

You can also bring nature more literally into the space. Cleanse the air with a Boston fern or other purifying plant and showcase your greenery on a stylish plant stand. Place fresh flowers on a table or dresser, and spritz pillows with a natural, herbal-scented linen spray. The options are endless; just head outside for inspiration. From dried flowers to pine cones, you can even add seasonal touches straight from the great outdoors.

A bedroom that helps you relax for a better night's sleep or simply a peaceful few minutes in the middle of the day is worth its weight in gold. Fortunately, you don't need a big budget to achieve it. Try these tips to create your own nighttime oasis, and be prepared to get the best sleep ever.

12 Ways to Brighten Up Your Home’s Interior

If you’re looking around your home and dreaming of a bright, happy space, you’re not alone. Bright homes seem to only be present on Pinterest, but with a few quick adjustments, your own home interior can be bright and Pinterest-worthy, too! Here are 12 ways to brighten up your home’s interior. 

1. Give the windows plenty of space. Avoid placing tall bookshelves or large plants around your windows. You can definitely place a waist-high console table or chest under the window with some smaller items on top, such as succulents or books. Placing too many tall or large items right next to the windows can cause the light to create shadows–making your space darker!

2. Keep everything light. While it might be tempting to paint your walls a bright or deep color, if you want the space to feel bright and happy, you’ll want to keep everything light. Use very pale neutrals as paint colors. You can always use deeper colors, such as jewel tones, as accents throughout the space if you want to switch things up. 

3. Use cozy elements. Just because you’re trying to make the place bright doesn’t mean that you have to get rid of your cozy items! Feel free to keep the personalized photo blankets and the soft throw pillows around. Some of the brightest homes are ones that look lived in. The key here is incorporating them well. Place the blankets on a blanket ladder or drape one on the back of the couch and sprinkle the throw pillows on your seating. 

4. Open the curtains. Having curtains can regulate temperature and encourage safety, but they can quickly make your home feel dark and drab. During the day, open the curtains to let all the natural light in. If you want to keep the curtains closed–especially if you live on the ground floor of an urban apartment–use some sheer or light-colored curtains to help filter in light. In fact, a combination of darker curtains and light sheers is a great way to have both a bright space and keep yourself safe. 

5. Clean and organize your space. Cozy doesn’t mean cluttered and dirty! Take some time to clean your space and organize all the clutter. Clean the walls and get the dust from the baseboards. Removing dirt can really make a space feel much brighter and happier. Organizing is also helpful in brightening a room because there’s less clutter around. Add some additional storage cubbies for any personalized blankets you have lying around and try to find places for your smaller knick-knacks to go. 

6. Incorporate greenery and florals. A space feels much brighter when there’s greenery and florals around. Add in some bright, seasonal flowers or lush greenery to your living space to make it feel very bright. Place them on coffee tables, on top of end tables or even in the windowsill. 

7. Use mirrors and glass. Using mirrors and glass can really open up a space and make it feel larger, but it can also make the room feel lighter. Because mirrors reflect light, placing them near your windows or across from them will make the space feel bright and big. Create a photo gallery with a circle mirror as the focal point, using engraved picture frames to make it a sweet and cozy feature of your living space.

8. Change out the lights. While yellowed bulbs and Edison lights are good for cozy lighting, they don’t make spaces look very bright or open. Instead, make sure you have bright white bulbs, especially LED ones. Adding some brighter lighting can really make the space feel lighter. Looking for a fun DIY project? Add recessed lighting to your home. They make the room feel larger and are also easy to maintain. 

9. Rearrange your rooms. Sometimes, the way you have your furniture laid out can make your room feel small and dark. Rearranging your furniture can really make the place feel bright and spacious. Place your larger pieces of furniture opposite the window or adjacent to it. Utilize corners, especially if your space is small, such as an apartment. You’ll realize how much bigger your space feels once you rearrange the furniture. 

10. Add light furniture. As you keep the walls light and bright, keep the furniture light and bright, too. Light furniture is good for keeping spaces feeling bright and large. The more dark items you have in your living spaces, the darker it’ll feel. Chairs, side tables, bookshelves–there are lots of ways you can incorporate lighter colors into your furniture. If having white furniture makes you nervous because of potential stains or dirt, then consider using light greys or blues in your furniture and decor. You can also use lightly stained wood. There are lots of ways you can incorporate light colors into your furniture and decor. 

11. Use metallics, glass and clear acrylic. Using transparent and shiny objects can keep your space bright. They’ll reflect light! Plus, any transparent materials, such as coffee tables or dining room chairs, let you see right through them. It appears like they aren’t even there. 

12. Do some yard work. If a bookshelf or TV stand right next to or in front of your window can block light from coming in, so can a tree or bush outside. Trim the branches of all your greenery outside–or, if your greenery hasn’t been refreshed in some time, why not switch it out? Keeping the branches trimmed is not only good for the plants, but it’s also great to ensure your space feels bright because more light will get in. 

A dark and dingy home can seem like a difficult task to tackle. From shadowy corners to dark furniture, your interior spaces can look like something out of a horror movie. With a few simple tricks, you can have a bright space that looks like it belongs on the cover of a magazine! You’ll want to spend all your days in your newly brightened space.

How to Brighten up the Interior Areas of Your Home

If your home environment is looking a bit dreary, you have many options for how to brighten up the interior space. Consider the following 5 ideas for transforming dull spaces to make them look brighter and more inviting.

Use Bright Daylight Bulbs

Your choice of interior lighting is one of the most obvious contributing factors to each room’s perceived levels of brightness. To make a room appear brighter, one of the first things you could consider doing is changing out your light bulbs. This will be particularly effective if your space has fluorescent lighting. You’ll also want to evaluate whether it would be productive to simply add a few extra lights to the space. If you only have one overhead light illuminating the area, you might want to add a few floor lamps or wall sconces to the décor.

Hang Light-Colored Curtains

If your windows are being obscured by heavy, dark-colored draperies, exchange those drapes for sheers or lighter-colored curtains. If applicable, roll up the shades and open the blinds.

Use Interior Painting to Your Advantage

The interior paint colors you choose influence your perception of the room’s relative brightness. If you need to make the room appear lighter or brighter, it’s beneficial to choose a correspondingly bright white interior paint color. It’s ideal if you can work with either an interior designer or an interior painting contractor who offers paint color consultations. Doing so assures that you get an experienced opinion on whether your chosen paint colors will be workable for that particular space.

Install Light-Colored Flooring

If your goal is to make your home look its brightest, it’s best to avoid decorating with dark colors on the floor. Light-colored flooring can help to create the perception that a space is bright and livable. It’s easy to add some light-colored area rugs to your living space. It’s a bit more complex to rip out your existing floor and reinstall it. However, if you’re planning a home remodel, you might decide it’s worth the effort to go ahead and install light-colored flooring. If you have hardwood flooring, it may be possible to remove your existing stain and refinish the floor with a lighter and brighter stain color.

Add Windows or Skylights

It may be possible to remodel your home to add windows or skylights. This could add significant amounts of natural light, which would brighten the interior considerably. If remodeling is not an option, you can at least clean your windows. If the glass on your windows is dirty, taking this action could possibly help to brighten the space.

These are some of the best options for making your interior space look lighter, brighter and more inviting. If you are dissatisfied with the level of brightness in your current design scheme, consider implementing any of the above ideas to improve the brightness levels.

Creative Ways To Make Your Interior Design Stand Out

Everybody wants to make their home look good, but that doesn’t mean that it’s going to have that “wow” factor when your guests come to see it for the first time. If that’s your primary goal, you’re going to want to read our list of creative ways to make your interior design stand out. Even just going through with one or two of these tips will increase the appeal of your home significantly.

Throw Pillows

Let’s start with something a little more basic. Whether they’re on the couch or your bed, pillows are usually the first thing people’s eyes are drawn to when looking at your furniture, especially if you make them stand out. Therefore, they are a crucial item to focus on. Try to avoid picking pillows that perfectly match the color of your bed or couch because they won’t get any attention that way.

Instead, choose pillows in complementary colors. That way, they will go well with the base color of the furniture while still drawing in your guests’ attention. Also, don’t be afraid to buy some oddly shaped pillows. These pillows are more about making a statement rather than being comfortable, although if you find some that do both, that’s a win-win.

Ottomans

If you want the ultimate statement piece, you’ll want to buy an ottoman. Most people use coffee tables as their centerpieces of the room due to their functionality. That’s why ottomans are the ultimate way to stand out. If you really want to make your ottoman pop, you should find some ways to customize it. Since nobody ever really sits on them, you’re free to use fabrics that would normally wear out quickly when heavily used.

Paint

Typically, people would suggest painting one wall a different color in order to make it stand out. While this is effective, it’s a bit overdone. That’s why we’re going to recommend painting a mural on your wall instead. If you’ve got the artistic talent to do it yourself, go for it!

If you’d rather leave the artistry to someone else, you can just as easily hire someone to bring your vision to life. Don’t shy away from any ideas because you think they would be too complex or time-consuming. This masterpiece is going to be what brings your whole room together, so you need to go the extra mile with it.

Lighting

The proper use of lighting is highly underrated when it comes to the décor of most people’s homes, which is why our final creative way to make your interior design stand out is to go all out with lighting. Lamps are an easy way to set the mood but installing dimmable ceiling lights is the way to go for all-around control. You can even get lights that change color to truly capture the feel you’re going for.

Buying a stylish chandelier or ceiling fan can also help pull a room together. Just make sure that you don’t go too extreme here because you can quickly turn something elegant into something tacky if you go overboard.