Everyone wants to feel like royalty once in a while. But for a long time that’s meant sending your bedroom back to medieval times. Aka, antiquated furniture and a purposely old-fashioned style. The good news? A few smart choices can bring your bedroom into the 21st century while still conveying a regal air. How? By relying less on an overall baroque or rococo style and more on just a few ornate pieces.
Get the Look:
Building a regal bedroom without the trappings of a medieval style is much harder, but doable. Start with a framed, tufted headboard and dress your bed up with patterned bedding and double the amount of pillows you actually need. For the foot of the bed, place a sheepskin bench of a similar color to the headboard to complete the shape of the bed area, and find a similarly textured throw to accent and provide extra warmth when needed to sit on top of the bedding. A Venetian style mirror or two adds an ornate touch to the room’s wall art. Finally, top your room off with a chandelier to really evoke that old-world regal look.
Why it Works:
In a modern home, you don’t actually want to recreate the bedrooms of royalty; the style simply won’t fit with the rest of your decor and can feel gaudy and out-of-place. Rather than bold gem tones and dark wood, a palette composed of cream, pink, and pastel grey is soft and effeminate. A subtle touch of gold or silver can convey the same richness in quality without feeling stodgy. Finding extra detail in normally simple pieces like the ornate mirror, tufted headboard, and patterning in the bedding and flooring call back to the expensive minute labor of the past without actually costing your entire budget due to modern manufacturing.
Upgrading your standard bedroom lights to a chandelier adds flair to the room you can’t get with other lighting. Pendant lights can also help declutter matching end tables and lend to the symmetry of the space, leaving you plenty of surface space to actually use at your bedside. A high ceiling helps, but if you don’t have one available try painting yours an airy color and having the window frames match. Light colors bounce around natural light to make the room feel bigger and taller.
The trick to building a regal bedroom that won’t feel out of place in a modern home isn’t to perfectly recreate the bedrooms of kings and queens, but to borrow and hint at luxury and finery while keeping your palette light and airy and your fabrics oh-so-inviting.
