Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Interior design: create a beach themed bedroom

You can enjoy the summer all year round by creating a beach themed bedroom. When creating your beach themed bedroom, you will want to stay on track and avoid obvious themes to keep the room timeless and relaxing. Unless you have a love for the following, you will want to avoid designing the room around lighthouses, and over abundance of seashells and nautical themes. You want to create simple relaxed atmosphere, not overwhelm yourself with imagery.

Wall treatments: Use colors notorious for relaxation, comfort, and welcome. Pastel shades of green, yellow, off white, and blue are great colors to use. You can choose simple print wallpaper

in these colors or create a very simple faux wall treatment. You can do a light wash, paint simple stripes, swirls, or sponge imprint a simple shape onto the walls.

Window Treatments: Window treatments should be light and breezy. You want to be able to imagine these curtains blowing in the breeze. Hang simple tab top or tie top curtain panels on white painted wooden rods.

Furniture: Furniture should be kept simple and have a light relaxed atmosphere. You can purchase a wicker set that includes dresser, armoire, love seat, headboard and a bench for the foot of the bed. Other alternatives would be to white wash existing furniture by thinning white paint with water or a faux glazing product, and putting layers of paint on the furniture until you are satisfied with the color.

Bedding: If you feel a strong need to use a theme item in your room décor, this is the place you will to use it. This is an item that you will keep for a year or season only. Use the color from your walls as your background color, and then choose a pattern like seashells, lighthouses, or something abstract. Keeping the walls and bedding in the same color family will further promote rest and relaxation.

Flooring: A white washed wood floor would be ideal for this setting. If you are uncomfortable making permanent changes to your floor, you have other options. You can purchase a soft, lightweight, light colored throw rug, or a wall-to-wall carpet in pastel color like blue, mauve or light green.

Accessories: As long as the accessories are not expensive, this is another area to bring in themed items. However, you must be careful not to overwhelm. Your wall hangings, nick-knacks, and disposable items can be shaped like seashells, lighthouses, and anchors if you wish. You an make all of the accessories yourself by bringing home items from the beach to make shadow box collages, and to accessorize light weight wicker items like picture frames, lamps, wastebaskets, and laundry baskets. In addition to making items to decorate your room, bring some life into the room in the form of plants. Place both hanging plants and floor plants in from of the windows to bring a bit of summer time into the room. Balance the extra shade provided by the plants with extra light wattage into the room.