Use Your Favorite Color
One of the most obvious choices for your bedroom’s color scheme is your favorite color or combination of colors. Do you love blue or brown or pink? Whatever hues you favor, there is a shade or tint that will work beautifully in your room. Think about the colors that make you feel good. Take a look in your closet; is there a particular color that dominates your wardrobe? Do you gravitate towards a certain color of flower, artwork or dishware? In the room where you restore your energies, you should be surrounded with color that you love.
Choose by Decorating Style
Is your bedroom decorated in a specific style? Some decorating themes have associated palettes. Here are some examples:
Cottage bedrooms: You’ll find lots of cheerful colors, including pastels, mid-tones, and white. What you generally won’t find in cottage décor are darks, neon brights, metallics, or extensive use of neutral tones. Tuscan-inspired bedrooms: This Mediterranean decorating style uses lots of sun-kissed earth tones, including terracotta, gold, olive green, brown, and brick red. You’ll often find small touches of turquoise or bright blue used as an accent, but not as the primary color. Contemporary or minimalist bedrooms: These modern retreats typically have a simple palette limited to neutrals or black, white, and gray. Shots of bright color in bedding, artwork, or other small accents are common. Coastal style: Lots of blue, white, and sandy tan are hallmarks of the beach theme, along with shots of red, orange or green as accents. Tropical style: Do you love the tropics? Then you’ll love a bedroom decorated in the cheerful colors of green, yellow, orange, blue, and salmon pink generally associated with this colorful style.
Get Inspired by Artwork or a Pattern
Do you have a rug, artwork, or another accessory that you love? These are all fantastic inspirations for bedroom color schemes. If you have a favorite photo, painting, or accessory—a unique chair, wardrobe, window treatment, or lamp, for example—it will have colors, textures, and patterns you can use in your bedroom’s palette. This works especially well when choosing bedroom colors for a child’s bedroom; using their artwork will offer great color options as well as a wonderful way to showcase their masterpieces.
Color Schemes and Combinations
Another way to decorate is to turn to the color wheel for inspiration. Easy palettes that can’t go wrong include monochromatic or analogous color schemes. Or you can choose a classic color combination, such as white plus a bright color, high-contrast combinations, black and white, or one predominant hue, such as blue, yellow or white.
Use a Neutral Color
The safest way to add color to a bedroom is to stick with a neutral, or mostly neutral, palette. Don’t think neutral has to mean boring, however. Done correctly, a neutral bedroom can be quite glamorous, sexy or sophisticated. Plus, it’s easy to add a few shots of color to liven up a subdued color scheme. Typically, neutrals include all shades of brown, from the softest sand to the darkest chocolate, but gray, black, and white also fall into the neutral category.
Colors to Help Promote Sleep
Some of the best bedroom colors help promote sleep and relaxation; after all, that’s the whole point of the room. If you are looking to create a relaxing oasis to ease away the cares of the day, your best color choices are cool hues found in nature. Studies have actually shown that a blue bedroom induces sleep faster than other colors. Turn to soft shades of blue, green or gray to create a calming vibe that will help you fall asleep.
