Your house is where you retire at the end of the day, retreating inside your own personal castle; hopefully defending from the monsters at the gate. Of all the rooms in your house, your bedroom is probably the one that you look forward to the most. The bedroom is your sanctuary, the place where you come to rest at the end of a busy day. You don’t want to come home to a bedroom that keeps you tense and awake instead of relaxed and asleep. If the room isn’t arranged, styled or decorated to fit your psychological needs, you might as well sleep in a dungeon. There are many factors that contribute to your psychological health within your bedroom that you may not be aware of. Your ability to handle all the things that happen over the course of a typical day can be severely taxed if you’re not getting the full quality of rest you need.

So how do you achieve a truly restful environment in your bedroom? If you’re not already experiencing that, try redecorating it. Redecorating a bedroom or even redoing it from the bottom up can be a great way to restore a good night’s sleep. The important first step is to take inventory of your bedroom and of yourself. What are the types of activities you normally do in their? You may keep a journal, read a lot of books, watch television, surf the Internet, etc. Take a look around at your bedrooom after you’ve done this and see whether it actually provides the things you want. Chances are it doesn’t. That’s your cue to roll up your sleeves and get to work.

By far the most important step you can take in redecorating your bedroom is to choose a color scheme. Doing this will help you determine a design plan for your entire room. In selecting and arranging your white bedroom furniture set, it’s important to have them all make sense according to an overall scheme. Otherwise the room will look disjointed and awkward, defeating the entire point of redecorating it. Here are some tips to consider when choosing a color scheme, and remember the choice of colors are entirely up to you:

- Mix and match. Use the colors you’ve chosen unequally for a better proportion and balance. This sounds completely wrong, but it’s true. For instance, painting the wall behind your bed a darker hue and the other three walls lighter hues creates a visually interesting space. This is because the darker wall accents the lighter walls and harmonizes them. Another trick to consider is to paint the ceiling a darker or lighter hue and paint the walls all the same hue. In considering accents, keep in mind you want to stick to the same color or colors – don’t paint your walls all different colors unless you have some really good furniture.

- Lighter colors creates a feeling of spaciousness and openness. Painting your walls lighter shades makes the room seem bigger and more friendly and accomodating. If you’re feeling a little closed in, consider this tactic to make you feel a little more welcome in your own room. The reason lighter colors create an open feeling is simple: light colors reflect visible light better than dark colors.

- If you want to create a cozy, warm feeling go with bright colors. If you have a large bedroom with a high ceiling warmer colors will help make your space more human. The bedroom will seem more livable and welcoming.

- If your room has an interesting or unique architecture, think about highlighting the more striking parts with contrasting colors. The junction between the two colors will focus attention on those portions of the architecture. On the other hand, if you want to downplay some awkward features of your room, a neutral palate with the same tonal value will help camouflage those sad features.

Once you’ve painted the room, the next step is furnishing it. I’ll talk to you about that in the next post. Until then, happy decorating!

Related posts:

1. How Color Affects A Room