What Colour To Paint The Bedroom Walls?

by Marjorie
(Cuenca, Ecuador)

Our bedroom curtains are a bronzy-khaki color, and cover the whole window/wall.

The floor and door and dressing-room are light-wood.

The dressing-table and desk are light wood too.

The duvet cover is reversible with beige-ivory embroided with delicate, white flowers and scrolls.

The other side is gold with splashes of peach, cream and dark blue.

There is no head-board, we use two very large pillows with ivory or dark-peach satin covers.

Thanks for any advice you could give. I also want to hang pictures of birds above the bed but aren't sure what colors to look for.

Thanks so much for any advice you can give me.

Andrea's Response

I suppose really the answer lies in which of these colours you like most and want to feature more prominantly.

You have the option here of using the ivory you mention to give a more light and classic look or bringing more colour to the room by using more of one of the colours you have already mentioned.

Personally I think I would opt for a cross between the two by using ivory for three of the walls - including the wall that you can see little of because of the curtains - and then using a bolder colour to create a feature wall.

You could choose to paint the wall opposite the window in the same shade of bronze/khaki as the curtains. This would certainly be bold and dramatic although possibly a little dark depending on how much natural light you have.

Similarly, the dark blue you mention could be used but this could be overwhelming.

If painting the room all ivory seems to... plain for your taste then a rich, warm peach seems the obvious answer.

Some years ago a friend gave me some beautiful peaches and cream patterned curtains for my spare bedroom. The room was completely neutral at that time and had cream walls and a plain beige carpet.

I really didn't have the time or inclination to totally redecorate the room so kept the cream walls for three of the walls and painted the fourth wall in a shade of warm peach to match the curtains.

The room still looked to be lacking somehow so on one of the cream walls, I used painter's masking tape to mask off four side-by-side vertical rectangles and filled these in with peach paint in three shades - light, medium and dark - with the fourth panel being a bright cobalt blue.

I bought a couple of plain blue rugs to go either side of the bed and the room was done.

Adding these rectangles of paint to the chimney breast wall somehow managed to bring warmth and interest to the room for a nominal cost and also meant that I didn't need to buy any artwork for the room which was an additional saving.

If you do decide to purchase some pictures of birds to finish the room it would make sense if you could try to get at least a little of the colours you already have in your palette in the pictures.

If you find this hard to do, remember that you could really bring out a small amount of a colour in a picture by adding a painted panel behind the picture.

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