9 ways to make your bedroom feel more cozy
Here’s how you can make your bedroom feel cozy
In your home, your bedroom is your sanctuary. It’s the place you go to get comfy, relax and fall into a slumber, so it should come as no surprise that you may find yourself searching for the best ways to create the coziest atmosphere possible. Luckily, there’s numerous ways to do this. In fact, we’ve thought of nine top tips to ensure your bedroom is the ultimate snug retreat, from decorating with comfy homeware essentials to incorporating natural, warm tones and textures.
If you’re looking to find better ways to sleep, ensuring your bedroom has the right ambience will set the scene perfectly. Many rooms in your home have a function. For a bedroom, it’s a place to hibernate and recharge. By using our top tips below, you’ll create the coziest of spaces by embracing simple design features, lighting, accessories and even scents. Ultimately, it depends on your own unique tastes, but each tip can be adapted to suit your wants and needs and most importantly, what makes you feel cozy and warm.
1. Use ambient lighting
There’s nothing particularly cozy about bright lights emitting from harsh white bulbs. If you’re trying to stay awake and alert, these work perfectly in your office space or kitchen. In you're going for a cozy vibe in your bedroom, though, warm light bulbs are the perfect option. As part of our natural circadian rhythm, a warmer tone is more relaxing and helps us initiate sleep.
If you’re looking to get even cozier, turning off the main bedroom lights and relying instead on well-placed lamps, fairy lights or electric candles can provide a mellow, homely setting. You may also want to consider using the Philips Hue lights, smart bulbs that offer specific Ambiance Kit packages to set the perfect mood lighting in different rooms across your home. Plus, they’re interchangeable without you having to get up from the comfort of your bed.
2. Introduce plants
Indoor plants will not only make your house smell nicer, but they’ll bring a sense of nature and calm to your room as well as naturally filtering the air in the bedroom for optimum relaxation.
With a whole host of positives, introducing plants into your bedroom should be a no-brainer. Whether it’s aloe vera for reducing indoor air pollution, or lavender to aid better sleep, their scent and color will bring a sense of tranquility to your indoor sanctuary. There are also certain plants that can prevent mold, because there’s nothing cozy about fungus on your bedroom walls.
Whatever plants you choose, just make sure they're safe to have around your pets if you've got furry family members.
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3. More pillows
A pillow’s Modus Operandi may as well be cozy. They’re soft, inviting and cuddly, so decorating your bed with them or placing them on any soft furnishings you may have in your bedroom will add an extra level of comfort to your bedroom. Natural tones for your pillows is a perfect idea for continuing the restful theme, but if an arty pillow or pastel color is something you find inviting, then they’re all great options.
There’s nothing quite as cozy as losing yourself in an abundance of pillows where you can enjoy the softness of feather-filled squish. Be sure to find the best pillow to suit your sleep style and needs though.
4. Rugs
Coziness doesn’t have to stop atop your furnishings though as a soft, fluffy rug that can provide extra texture to your flooring is key. Whether you’re doubling up on a carpet, adding softness to a hard floor or working to bring as much warmth to your bedroom as possible, rugs can provide.
We’d recommend picking a rug that is plush and high-pile though, like a shag rug or sheepskin material to bring that extra padding for under your feet. They’re also a great way of bringing a warm tone and texture to your room, which we’ll discuss more below.
5. Warm tones and textures
Stepping away from the decorative aesthetics for a moment and delving into the overall feel of your bedroom, the best way to create a cozy feel is to invite warm tones and textures into your space. There’s different ways to approach this and it completely depends on what makes you feel cozy.
For warm tones, you may opt for darker hues to bring a more dramatic, shadowed effect to your bedroom that makes you feel cocooned. For this, we’d recommend deep reds or navy blues. Or, you may opt for lighter, more natural warmth where your tones and textures are soft and earthy. For this, we’d recommend warm whites and soft pastels. It’s an individual choice, but choosing the right colors goes a really long way in setting the whole vibe for the room.
6. Add wood
Another great way to add warmth to your bedroom is by incorporating wood. For this, a popular trend, especially for bedrooms, is to create wood panelling along all your walls or just one feature wall. In addition to being a perfect way to bring new life to your room and cover up less-than-perfect walls, it adds a charm and depth to your bedroom that can make it feel even cozier. It's also one way to update your bedroom without giving it a complete revamp.
There’s different ways to use wooden boards, depen ding on what aesthetic you’re after — from squares, to stripes, to board and batten. Depending on you style and the room layout you have will determine whether panelling works for you. If not, you can opt simply to add small wood aesthetics from lamp bases to your bedframe without making a dramatic change.
7. Incorporate artwork
Art has the power to completely change your mood. If you find a piece of artwork that evokes a sense of warmth, coziness and serenity in you, hang it on a wall in your bedroom. Wallpaper can also be the perfect way to decorate a wall or numerous walls should you find one that tunes into your comfy aesthetic.
Take a cloudy landscape with the sun setting behind the mountains, or a body of water laying calm and still with the clouds reflecting from the sky, for example. The choice of artwork will be unique to you, but can add so much to simple wallpaper or paint.
8. Blankets
We’ve spoken a lot about adding warm tones, textures, and items to your room that will give you a sense of coziness, but what about more on actually being cozy? Like the pillows you may or may not have doubled up on, laying in a bed full of blankets, — whether on top, wrapped up or just laid luxuriously around — is the ultimate homeware accessory for a cozy bedroom. And it's one way to keep warm without turning up the thermostat.
Picking the softest materials like cotton, cashmere and fleece will provide softness as well as actual warmth. There’s not much that brings more comfort than being wrapped in a blanket.
9. Calming scent
Finally, infusing a calming scent into your bedroom, if you’re not sensitive to smells, is a lovely relaxing way to get cozy. For this, you can burn essential oils, either through an oil burner or diffuser, in scents like lavender, bergamot, ylang ylang and sandalwood.
If you’re looking to create a great-smelling bedroom without the use of any chemicals, we’ve got 7 natural hacks to do just this, from creating your own room spray, pot pourri and reed diffuser oil. Find a scent that works for you and then find a way to implement it into your bedroom.
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Grace is a freelance journalist working across homes, lifestyle, gaming and entertainment. You'll find her writing for Tom's Guide, TechRadar, Space.com, and other sites. If she's not rearranging her furniture, decluttering her home, or relaxing in front of the latest streaming series, she'll be typing fervently about any of her much-loved hobbies and interests. To aid her writing, she loves to head down internet rabbit holes for an unprecedented amount of time.