Bedroom Inspiration Part 1

I've had a fairly large number of clients in lately who were having a hard time finding a place to start when decorating their bedrooms. So I'm going to share some of the websites and blogs that I visit when I need to start a project or just have the desire to look at some pretty.

Often when beginning the process of putting a room together we do have a place to start. It can be a painting, some drapery or upholstered furniture that needs to stay, an antique vase or even a favourite scarf. Any of those can give you a colour palette or dictate the requirements of the rest of the room. For instance, a bold, multicoloured abstract painting can require that the walls and bed linens be white, the furniture be minimal and low profile in order to best show the drama of the work and from it an accent colour can be chosen for a throw blanket and toss cushions, a vase or candles and an area rug that pulls the room into the painting and softens the starkness of an otherwise white room. There are many, many ways to draw an entire room around a single object.

There are however times when we are presented with a truly blank slate, a completely fresh start. And sometimes the hardest room to decorate is the blank slate. At the store I keep six beds fully made up along with lots of other options that we can pull together but what I have on the floors won't necessarily appeal to everyone. I have literally hundreds of fabric samples to look through and play with, but there are many people who are unable to visualize the finished room from small samples. And there is nothing wrong with that at all! So when frustration starts to set in I tell people that taking the time to find inspiration is a good thing. Whether it's from magazines, blogs, tv shows or catalogues, take it where you can find it, bring it in to me and we can create something perfect for you.

The following are some of the places I love to browse through to get inspired and to drool over.

Design*Sponge is a fantastic site full of design and decor how-tos, before & afters and sneak peaks as well as great city guides, drool worthy recipes and up and coming trend spotting.

Apartment Therapy is a huge, huge, site packed full of fantastic interiors. It can be a little difficult to navigate but if you use their search bar and the term "roundup+bedroom" you'll end up with links to countless articles.

DesignTripper is one of my newly found favourites. The photography is stunning and the locations they feature are extremely worthy of your daily daydream allotment.

Houzz is a massive collection of photos. You can use their filters to select room style (ie eclectic, traditional) to help narrow it down a bit. There isn't any content so you can see a lot of images in a short time.

I Want That Bedroom is a similar site with many photos of gorgeous rooms. Again you can filter the results using the tags, but it is a smaller site than some of the others so go ahead and scroll though. You'll enjoy it!

Okay, that's good for now. I'll be back with Part 2 of this post early next week. There will be more links and a couple of bedrooms based on a single object starting point.

Have a great weekend!