Your budget-friendly main bedroom makeover

The amount of time we’ve spent at home recently has drawn attention to the areas that leave room for improvement. If your sleep space is a bit blah, even minor alterations will make a difference and help you sleep easier. Try some of the following ideas from stylists and the experts at Resene for fun ways to add beauty to your bedroom without feeling the pinch in your purse.

Pick a paint

For the biggest impact for the smallest outlay, give your bedroom a fresh coat of Resene paint – even DIY novices can pull it off, and typically finish a room in a weekend. The experts at your local Resene ColorShop can tell you what tools you need to do a great job and help you with colour selection. Whatever colour you choose, take home testpots or A4 drawdown paint swatches to trial the colour in your bedroom so you can see what it will look like in situ, in all kinds of light and at different times of day.

If you want to create an on-trend, pared-back Scandi canvas to which you can add timber and neutral-coloured accents, bisque white Resene Double Alabaster, shadowy Resene Half Black White or white-with-a-hint-of-grey Resene Sea Fog are excellent options for your walls. Warmer neutrals to try include beige Resene Bison Hide, Resene Quarter Joss and Resene Drought. Create a tranquil retreat that brings the outside in with the soft green tones of Resene Spring Rain, Resene Envy or Resene Spanish Green. For a feminine energy, choose dusty pastels like graceful cherry pink Resene Gelato, atmospheric Resene Lola and grey-blue Resene Frozen. If you’re not afraid of the dark, give your bedroom a more masculine slant with steel-blue Resene Hammerhead or serious Resene Regent Grey – you can then lighten the mood with contrasting crisp white bed linen and dreamy diaphanous curtains.

Boost your bed

While we’re on the subject of bedding, interior designer Annick Larkin says, “Your bed is often the focal point of a bedroom, so cover yours in beautiful bedlinen layered with decorative cushions and a textural throw for a indulgent and colourful statement.” You might like to choose patterned or jewel-toned fabrics to contrast with your pale walls or get your zzzs in a tonal space featuring bedding and soft furnishings in fabrics in the same colour family as your walls.

Floor it

Now it’s time to get cracking on your flooring. “Even if your bedroom has wall-to-wall carpet, layer on an accent rug for extra texture and colour,” says interior stylist Megan Harrison-Turner. Painted floors are a popular look right now. Go for a block colour or consider Resene Colorwood Whitewash or Resene Colorwood Greywash for an effect that lets the woodgrain shine through.

Lighting can completely transform a room and whether overhead in the form of a luxurious pendant or in floor-standing or desk-lamp form, it’s an investment you’ll be glad you made every night of the week. If you already have bedside lamps or perhaps a large rice paper shade in your sleep space, you could always revamp their shades and bases to suit your new colour scheme by painting them with your favourite Resene hue or using painter’s tape to create stripes or other graphic patterns. Light switch covers are ripe for this treatment too.

Suitable for new builds and retrofitting into existing homes, energy-efficient Resene SmartTouch is an ingenious conductive coating based on touch-screen technology that turns your wall into one big light switch – no more fumbling in the dark. The touch commands let you switch lights on and off separately or in groups. “You only need to coat a small area – up to 2m² however a qualified electrician will have to complete the installation,” say Resene paint expert Jay Sharples. Coat the wall, have a professional install the electronic controller, then paint over the top with Resene SpaceCote Low Sheen in your chosen colour or cover with a chic Resene wallpaper.

Get a handle on your hardware

Bedroom drawers that are a real snooze can be made new-ish again by repainting them and changing out the knobs or handles. For a beautiful black, think Resene All Black or Resene Blackjack; for a luxe metallic effect, use Resene FX Metallic – there’s a huge range of colours to choose from, and you can update your photo frames and mirrors this way while you’re at it.

Vote green

“A potted plant or two adds life, colour and texture to your bedroom, plus it helps purify the air,” says Annick. “Use smaller plants such as peace lilies or trailing string of pearls on your bedside tables, and larger plants such as a monstera or a tall fiddle-leaf fig to fill empty corners.”

Inexpensive terracotta pots are easy to turn into colour-coordinated additions to your bedroom with Resene testpots. Step one is to apply a coat of Resene Aquapel & Terracotta Sealer inside and out. Once dry, apply two coats of your chosen colour.

Along with other industrial materials and finishes such as concrete, rust is an appealing new trend and achievable with Resene FX Faux Rust Effect. Once applied, it looks for all the world like rust, and for true authenticity will continue to age like it, too. Designed for non-contact surfaces, it’s not suitable for your bedroom walls, but you could use it to bring a weathered finish to your plant pots.

August 31, 2020

For more ideas and inspiration from other DIYers, see the Resene decorating inspiration gallery online and view the huge colour and wallpaper library at your local Resene ColorShop.

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