Bed Styling Ideas: How to Make Your Bed Cozy & Stylish
Living Pretty Ep48 // Bed Styling Ideas: How to Make Your Bed Cozy & Stylish
Need some bed styling ideas? Let’s talk about how to make your bed cozy and stylish!
In this video, I share some tips on arranging bed pillows, choosing your sheets, picking the right comforter, and more, so you can walk away with some solid bedroom styling ideas!
I personally have a bit of a dark boho bedroom in terms of style, but these cozy bedroom decor tips can be used for any kind of bedroom styling. So if you’re looking for ideas for your small apartment bedroom, tips on arranging decorative pillows for your bed, and want to create a cozy apartment for yourself, stick around for these interior decor bedroom tips!
Video Transcript ↓
I’ve made some slight edits in the transcript below so that everything makes more sense in text form. But overall, this is almost a word-for-word dictation of what I say in the video. I’m a much better writer than this, I swear, haha.
Hey bed. Look at you over there, looking all pretty and cozy, just begging to slept in… I can’t wait to be inside you tonight. I’m going to sleep in you so hard that I’ll wake up in the morning feeling refreshed and well-rested. Tonight - every night - I’m yours.
What, don’t you ever feel the need to worship your bed a little bit after a long day? A little sweet talking to a piece of furniture never hurt anyone. 🙃
In all seriousness, I would venture to say that your bed is the most important piece of furniture in your apartment.
It’s like the backbone to your bedroom, and if you live in a studio like I do, it’s like the backbone to the entire apartment!
And your bed is one of those things that you want to be pretty, but you also need it to be comfy. It basically cradles you in its arms for hours every night - it should be treated with respect.
So in this video, I’m going to lay out my approach to bed styling - from sheets to throw pillows - so that you can make your bed stylish and cozy.
And if you’re new to my channel, my name is Steffi and I’m the creator of the interior style blog Moda Misfit as well as the online course Small Apartment Styling School.
And you’re watching Living Pretty, the place for apartment styling tips. Just because you rent your space doesn’t mean you can’t own your style!
So if you want to get inspired with me every week, be sure to subscribe!
Also, if you live in a studio apartment and you want a free resource that will help you jumpstart your styling, I highly recommend you download my free Studio Styling 101 workbook!
So the goal with bed styling is to create a cozy, inviting place of rest. Your bed should should act as pretty decor during the day and an enticing destination at night.
The bed is like a sophisticated woman. She wants to look good, but it’s what’s going on underneath that’s even more important.
So with that, let’s talk about what’s going on underneath, which is your sheets!
1. The sheets
I’m going to get to the actual bed styling - as in the pretty stuff you actually see - but I would be remiss if I didn’t touch on the importance of sheets in a bed video.
Choose your sheets wisely. Your sheets can make or break your entire bed experience.
They must be soft. They must be quality. They must be breathable. And they don’t have to be high thread count.
Yes, you heard me right. Thread count really doesn’t matter. I’ve felt high thread count sheets that honestly felt like sandpaper.
Instead, focus on finding sheets that are cost effective, decent quality, and soft. And it’s best if you can feel them in person before you buy.
Your body is going to be all up in your sheets every night. Like I said, choose wisely. Your beautiful bod totally deserves it.
2. The comforter
Next is the comforter. If you’re at home, I want you to look at your comforter right now and ask yourself these 3 questions:
Is it comfortable when you sleep in it?
Is it pretty?
Does it play well with others?
The purposes of the first two questions are pretty self-explanatory - your comforter should be comfortable and pleasing to the eye.
But something a lot of people overlook is whether or not it plays well with the things around it.
Is your comforter helping your other decor in your bedroom shine? Is it complimenting the overall picture in your room or is it detracting from it?
An easy way to ensure that your comforter supports the rest of your bedroom styling is to get it in a solid color.
There’s nothing wrong with patterns - they’re just tougher to style around and can compete with your other accessories and cause that hodgepodge vibe.
So if you want an easy approach to creating a cohesive bedroom, I recommend getting a comforter in a solid color and using your accessories to convey most of your styling.
This not only makes your bed styling easier, but it makes it more versatile! Because if you ever want to switch up your bedroom style, all you have to do with your bed in this case is switch out a few throw pillows and call it a day.
If you want an example of how I’ve done this, you can watch this video. Basically, the fact that I have just a solid gray comforter makes it really easy for me to switch things around and not have to fuss over it too much.
3. Throw pillows
Throw pillows contain so much styling power. Seriously, I believe that throw pillows are probably the most potent form of interior decorating.
They’re so simple, so little… yet so powerful.
When you walk into a room with some well-selected decorative pillows, you may not realize it, but they’re basically being slapped in the face with style.
A huge part of why my apartment looks good is because of my selection of decorative pillows!
I mean, look at my bed without decorative pillows…
So boring, so naked, so sad.
But here’s the problem: selecting and arranging decorative pillows for your bed is tricky. A lot of people just don’t know where to start or how to create a bed that’s aesthetically pleasing.
So I’m going to share with you my simple decorative pillow formula for the bed!
Now, there are infinite ways that you can arrange pillows on a bed. My way is definitely not the only way.
But if you’re totally stumped when it comes to throw pillow styling, you may enjoy an easy formula like this one. So here it is...
Think of your decorative pillow arrangement as a bird. We’re going to build a bird with your decorative pillows. Lol.
First you have the body of the bird at the center. This is the pillow that holds everything together. It’s usually the biggest pillow and ideally it’ll have an interesting texture or color - or both.
Then you have the wings. These are the pillows on either side of the center body pillow, and they are identical. So it’ll be two of the same pillow.
I’m personally a fan of symmetry when it comes to styling a bed in a small space because symmetry creates a sense of order and cohesiveness that’s hard to attain in a small space.
And the wing pillows that create this sense of symmetry should definitely have an interesting pattern to them. They should make some kind of statement. For example, my wing pillows are making kind of a baroque, moody dark decor statement.
Basically, your wing pillows are your opportunity to drive home a particular style and communicate it clearly!
Then, finally, you have the beak of the bird. This is a smaller pillow that’s layered in the front to create a sense of depth to the pillow arrangement. Because you don’t want your throw pillows to be in a simple line, you want a layered look!
The beak pillow can pretty much be any pattern, texture, or style. The important thing is that it’s smaller than all the other pillows so that you’re not only creating depth but also playing with varying heights.
And you can do my bird approach to decorative pillows with more pillows too, if you like.
For example, below is a photo of my bed in my LA apartment from a few years ago, with a lot of the pillows I have in my apartment now. It’s simply more layers of pillows than I have now, but I was still creating a bird!
You still have the body, the beak, and the wings. The difference is this bird has more.. plumage on its wings. 😂
4. The throw
The final piece to my approach to bed styling is the throw at the end of the bed.
Here’s the thing about throws. They’re tricky little bastards.
There’s nothing harder, in my opinion, than making a throw look effortlessly thrown. It actually takes a lot of effort.
Which is why I have a more tidy, folded look to my throw situation.
Would I like my throw to look like I threw it on my bed with reckless abandon and it happened to turn out perfect? Yes.
But when I make my bed every morning, I frankly just can’t deal with that rigmarole.
Either way, I definitely recommend you incorporate a throw at the end of your bed, whether you effortlessly throw it or neatly fold it!
Because it’s the final detail that gives a sense of completion to the picture you’re painting with your bed styling. It’s like the period at the end of a statement, or it can even be an exclamation point. Not having a throw at the end of your bed can feel like you’re ending your style statement with a question mark.
I encourage you to take my approach from this video, use it as a guide so you don’t have to feel totally lost, then do your own thing!
Have fun, experiment, and at the end of the day, sleep well!
For daily glimpses into my studio apartment life, you can follow me on Instagram @moda.misfit!
And for regular doses of apartment styling tips and small space decor inspiration, subscribe to my YouTube channel and hit the bell to be notified when a new video goes up every week.