Our bedroom had become the most neglected space in our house as we worked on various house projects, and I’d finally had enough. We ditched our sad, broken furniture, repainted, and found a style that fit us perfectly in this cozy luxe bedroom makeover.
This post has been a long time coming! Our bedroom was 90% done for months before we finished the last details. And then we had a baby.
Now I’m finally sharing this space with you just before we take it all out and move it into our brand new master suite that’s being built as an addition to our house.
What can I say? Sometimes life throws you curveballs.
But I’m actually kind of glad we redid our bedroom when we did. Not only have I enjoyed it for the last several months, I’m so glad to not be making all these design decisions at the same time as everything else.
And I can say that after living in it for months, I still absolutely love it and we’re going to keep it basically the same when we move into the new space.
Bedroom Makeover
This makeover was a long time coming. We hadn’t really planned to do it in the middle of our basement reno, but after I tore my ACL and ended up having two recovery periods (because I couldn’t have surgery right away due to Covid) I spent a LOT of time in that room and decided it needed to be tackled right away.
It still took some time, in part because we’re DIYers who have kids and jobs, and in part due to waiting for furniture longer than normal because of the pandemic.
I wanted to create something that felt both cozy and luxe. I wanted it to feel inviting and warm, but without feeling sloppy, and with touches of glam here and there. The design incorporates both natural elements and gold metallic finishes to balance these two feelings.
The Paint
When we first started updating pieces in the room, we hadn’t really planned on changing up the paint. But after we took out the curtain rods and took down old artwork, we realized we were going to have to patch holes and paint anyway.
Our bedroom had been a boring-but-neutral shade of off-white for more than a decade. And I decided I wanted to be bold and paint a super dark grey accent wall behind the bed. I’m so glad we did! I love it so much. The rest of the walls got a taupe/grey kind of color.
Paint used:
Nightstands
My husband and I got married right out of college, and we bought a whole bedroom set for $400 at the time. It wasn’t real wood, and wasn’t made to last by any means. We’d gotten rid of the headboard years ago, but the nightstands and dressers stayed long past their best by dates.
We traded our bulky, scratched up nightstands for these sleek wall-mounted ones I found on Etsy.
Our bed has storage drawers on each side, and with the other nightstands, we weren’t able to open the drawers near the top of the bed. These wall-mounted nightstands not only look much cleaner, they allow for us to access the storage easily.
I also love that we can’t just unnecessarily store things in our nightstands anymore! We found a ridiculous amount of stuff in the bottom of those drawers that we never needed to keep.
Dressers
We had dressers that matched the nightstands and were constructed just as poorly. The drawers had broken several times and been patched back together just enough to be mostly functional. The cheap drawer bottoms sagged and routinely caused problems.
(Yes, I know I did a crappy job cleaning this mirror but I really didn’t feel like re-cleaning it right before throwing it out. I’m lazy like that.)
We traded my low dresser and my husband’s tall one for a matching his & hers chest of drawers set, and I couldn’t be happier. This gives me all the clothes storage I need while allowing space for a full-length mirror for getting dressed by.
I absolutely adore these dressers. They’re made to order and are solid wood construction, so we won’t have any sagging drawer bottoms anymore! They’re crafted to last a lifetime.
- Dressers from Quality Woods
- Mirror from Home Goods
- Art prints (Falling Flowers, Night of Jealousy, 1893) from Art.com in frames from Michael’s
Bedding
I really didn’t want to change out our bedding, actually. I liked this duvet cover. But it had become threadbare in spots and wasn’t going to hold up to daily use much longer so we decided to get a new one.
It took me so long to decide on something. At first I tried to see if we could find this same one again, but it had been several years since we bought it, so it wasn’t available anywhere anymore.
Eventually we settled on this one from West Elm. It has a light geometric pattern on it and fits nicely into the room.
Because it was a larger duvet cover than the previous one, we also had to replace the comforter inside. This was when I learned that you’re better off getting a comforter that’s actually bigger than the cover. It sounds counterintuitive, but this way the comforter stays in place much better. Our old one was constantly shifting, even with ties in the corners, and this one doesn’t have those problems. It also looks a bit more plush.
- Duvet Cover from West Elm (still available at time of writing)
- 100% cotton comforter
- Artwork from World Market, no longer available
TV Area
We have a small wall between the door to our bedroom and the closet, and we’d had my husband’s ugly dresser there, with the TV above it. Clearly we’d never done anything about the cord situation. Just one of the many eyesores in this room.
With the dressers both on the other wall, we needed something here to put the tv box on that also looked nice. This was the last piece of the room– everything else was done for a number of months before we got this shelf up.
I absolutely love this shelf. We made it ourselves, with a piece of live-edge wood we found at our local Habitat for Humanity ReStore for $25. We cut it to length, sanded it smooth, stained it and finished it with a satin polyurethane. Then we attached brackets we found on Amazon. It’s such a beautiful piece, and I’m so happy with how it turned out.
We dealt with the cord situation by using recessed cable plates in the wall to reach the outlet at the bottom, and with a paintable cord cover.
Window Treatments
Ok, I don’t have a before picture for you, but I’ll paint a picture with words: It was awful.
I’m a terrible sleeper, and need to be able to black out the windows completely in order to sleep. So our solution over the years involved black roller shades, velcro, blackout curtains I tried to make myself that never looked right, and an assortment of blankets. We basically never opened the windows and it was an ugly cave in there.
I hated it. But it wasn’t until we decided to install the floating nightstands that we had to figure out something different because we couldn’t have curtains anymore.
So we got some blackout roman shades. We mounted them outside the window frame and ordered them a few inches bigger on all sides to help block the light. But they still didn’t keep it quite dark enough for me, so we devised a simple way to fix that.
We put small screws and washers in the side of the window frame in a couple of spots. When we close the shades, we use neodymium magnets over the shades to keep them right up against the window. They’re super easy to open in the mornings and the screws are nearly invisible if you’re not right up next to them.
- Roman Shades from Select Blinds, color no longer available
- Neodymium magnets from Amazon
Jewelry Storage
This is a little extra bit outside of your typical room design pieces, but I wanted to share it anyway because it’s a functional design element that I love!
Previously, I’d had a lazy-susan sort of jewelry holder. But it couldn’t store my longer necklaces and once we switched to tall dressers, it just wasn’t functional to have it on top of the dresser anymore.
Enter this gorgeous jewelry holder I found on Etsy. It fits the vast majority of my jewelry and is a design element at the same time. I also love how it fits behind the door without hitting it, so it makes use of otherwise wasted space.
And there’s no limit to how long my necklaces can be!
So what do you think of our bedroom makeover? I absolutely adore our bedroom for the first time ever. I’m so glad we went bold with the paint color and took the time to get the finishes just right. And even though we’ll be moving into a different room once the addition is finished, we’ll be keeping the same style as much as possible!
