MARK CUTLER STYLE GUIDE: Decorating a Large Sparse Bedroom

I am always told by people who are looking to design their space, that one of the hardest things that they face is where to start. So I thought that today it might be helpful to look at one of my favorite rooms and walk you through the process of how it came together.

Starting Point: How to Decorate this Bedroom

As you can see here, the room I was working on was a large bedroom space. These spaces are always challenging for me because I really believe that a bedroom should be a warm, cozy environment, and that is tough to create when you are dealing with bigger spaces. The carpet was brand new and the walls were Venetian plaster, so I couldn't change them. We had just bought this bed that was starting to look too small for the room, and the owner wanted to reuse their bedside tables.

The Goals:
• Warm up the space
• Create a more intimate scale so the bed looked better
• Find a way to incorporate their existing furniture into the scheme
• Create a looser, more "lived-in" feel to the room

The Solution:
I tried a number of different things to achieve the goals that I had set for myself. Here are some of the solutions that I think worked well.

• The first thing I did was to create an upholstered folding screen that went on the wall behind the bed. It breaks down the scale and provides a background for the bed that is more in keeping with its size.

• For the bedside tables, I re-stained them, then upholstered the panels in the same fabric as the drapery (this is a great inexpensive technique you can use on most pieces of old furniture that you want to freshen up).

• I then created several sitting areas, one over by the window using a George Smith chaise (that is low enough not to block the view), and then another at the foot of the bed for watching TV.

• On the fireplace I added sconces and an under-scaled art piece (playing with scale like this can make your art feel much more special, and draw people in to see it).

• For lighting, I had originally wanted to use mostly lamps and sconces, but then added some small pin lights that added drama to the room at night. Sometimes when a room is lit only by lamps and decorative pieces, it can get flat and uninteresting, you might want to try adding some pin lights to important areas; I think you will be surprised by the results.

• I decided to keep the color palette pretty soft so that the room would not have too many points of interest. I really wanted it to be fairly serene.

Well, I hope that you find this helpful when you start to plan your own space.

Mark Cutler
Interior Designer,
MarkCutlerDesign.com