My minimalist bedroom – the ‘finished’ room

_{Some items have been gifted}

After about 5 months of decorating on-and-off whenever we had the time (and, most importantly, whenever we had the money!) the bedroom is finally finished. Of course, I use the word ‘finished’ lightly because there are still more things I want to add to the bedroom, such as and a dressing table. But for now, I’m really happy with the room and I couldn’t wait any longer to share some photos of it with you.After stripping off floral wallpaper to reveal bright orange walls, the original room was rather far off the calm, minimal space I had in mind. Nonetheless, we happily filled holes, peeled off borders and painted layers (and layers) of cheap white emulsion on the walls and ceiling to create a crisp white box. The next step was fitting a new radiator – one that would be big enough to heat the space. The original radiator’s BTU rating wouldn’t have heated the window about it, let alone the rest of the room in the winter. And considering that we were starting work in January, heating seemed to be a priority at the time. That, and because I didn’t want to lay a new floor only for it to be ruined when we changed the radiator.This was the first time I’d ever laid laminate wood flooring, and was surprised by how quickly the process was. We laid underlay, and then carefully clipped together planks of Farmhouse White flooring from DirectWoodFlooring.co.uk. There’s a little GIF of the installation in my blog post about the floor if you fancy seeing my first attempt at laying flooring!Once the floor was down we could order the bed and mattress (from Eve). When the bed arrived it had a tiny rip in the seam of the headboard so a quick email to Argos got us a £20 refund and I fixed it myself. We spray painted the wooden feet of the bed white so that it blended in with the floor better. The king size mattress was delivered in a small box; there’s a GIF of the unboxing here, which clears up just how a mattress could fit in such an unlikely box. We started our 100 day trial and happily have had the best sleep ever on it, so it’s staying put!My husband took a lovely photo of the beach on Valentine’s Day so when I discovered that I could have it printed the size of the bedroom by Murals Wallpaper, I jumped at the chance. I went for a black and white version of his photograph and we hung the wallpaper together in an afternoon. After living with white walls for a while, I was worried that this might make the room feel smaller but, in fact, the horizon on the photo helped to expand the size of the room.Similarly, when we decided to go for fitted wardrobes, I was concerned that they would feel overbearing in the room. Again, I was delighted once we’d built the flat-pack wardrobes by Jali, because the white wood diminished the size and impact considerably. I designed the wardrobes myself, using the program on their website, so the units were custom-made to use every inch of available wall space for storage. I don’t think we’ll ever need any more drawers or hanging space now that we’ve got the wardrobes installed (if you want to see a GIF of them being constructed, check out my flat-pack blog post here).We made these bedside tables from an old chest of drawers and the legs from a mid-century planter, so I’ll be sure to show you the DIY on the blog at some point in the future! I genuinely searched for months before finding these ‘eyeball” bedside lamps for just £15. They’ve just been delivered and are the perfect size and height for our small bedside tables – they don’t take up too much room, and the eyeball can be moved up and down the ‘stem’, or tilted for bedtime reading. I also ordered a lampshade and another lamp from the same company IconicLights.co.uk so I’ll be sure to share photos of these when I decorate the other rooms.

All that was left to do was dress the bed and, can you believe it, choosing the duvet cover was one of the hardest decisions in the whole decorating process. I wanted some reversible bedding so that I could get the most out of the purchase – preferably a darker colour for winter and a lighter colour for summer. Thankfully, I found exactly what I wanted at the same place that I got my duvet; Eve. The crisp linen fabric is a texture that I’ve not come across in bedding in the past, and it creates that slightly crumpled, slept-in look that I’ve seen in effortlessly cool loft apartments all over Pinterest. It gets even better after it has been washed a few times; it really softens up and becomes super-cosy, like old heirloom sheets.

I’m using the lighter side at the moment and have teamed it with a mustard throw and cushion that I got in the Julian Charles sale at the start of the year, a squishy grey linen scatter cushion from SofaSofa and a textured triangle cushion that I ummed-and-ahhed about in the Sainsburys homewares section. So glad I bought it in the end because it brings all the shades of grey together nicely with a pop of sunny yellow. My star light was from Store21 in the January sale for just £5 (I think the shop has closed down now?) and my gold journal is from Pen Heaven. I don’t want to use my phone as my alarm any more so I picked up a traditional brass alarm clock when I was shopping for my office shelves at Red Candy.  And that’s the room almost done. Cookie and Muffin take it in turns to lounge on the Acapulco chair that we’ve had for a year or so, and I think I’d like to hang a map in the space above the chair. Oh, and the tall mirror (from B&M) needs to be hung on the wall too. I definitely want to get a large piece of artwork for above the headboard. I think the wall space looks a little empty at the moment so that’s probably the last thing to be done, hurrah!What do you think of my minimalist monochrome (with splashes of gold) bedroom? Leave me a comment below and let me know if you can recommend a good place to buy large pieces of wall art for very little money!

Some items in this blog post have been gifted to me and the pink links indicate a gifted product, affiliate link or information source. All thoughts and opinions in this post are based on my own experience and I am not responsible for your experience 🙂