A soft, minimalist beige bedroom: mood board & plans

Blocking up the door to our ensuite and opening a new one off the landing has not only enabled us to create a proper upstairs bathroom, it’s also given us scope to transform our long-neglected master bedroom into the soothing sanctuary we’ve always dreamt of. We’ve already made a start on it and I hope to show you the results soon, but first I want to share a look at our plans – and explain why we needed to make changes to this space in the first place.

Here’s what the bedroom used to look like:

It’s a large room – by far the biggest in the house – and I know it looks nice above. But I’d become adept at using carefully chosen photography angles to hide a major problem: the inefficient and impractical layout. Two doorways, a chimney breast and fireplace, a large window and a long radiator left us with very little wall to put furniture against, resulting in almost no storage and lots of wasted space in the middle. Take a look at the floorpan below and you’ll see what I mean:

Now, things are totally different. As well as bricking up and plastering over the ensuite door, our builders have removed the old radiator and installed a new one beneath the window, allowing us to move the bed and freeing up an entire wall for some much-needed wardrobes:

Not only is the new arrangement a lot more practical, it’s also helped the room as a whole look more balanced and symmetrical. Our house is part of a curved terrace and is therefore wedge-shaped – something that was really obvious when the bed was placed opposite the chimney-breast wall, which fans out at an angle, but is much less so now. What’s more, we’ve lost the sense of emptiness without detracting from the spacious feel.

Now the layout is sorted, we’re turning our focus to the furniture and decoration. We haven’t paid much attention to this room in the six years since we bought the house as we knew we’d be making big changes one day, so it’s always felt a bit bland and unloved. The plan is to keep things fairly minimalist and pared-back, but ramp up the sense of cosiness and character. We’re going to use the same palette of colours and materials that we have running throughout the house – white, grey, beige, pale oak and black – but vary the proportions so that there’s a little more beige and a little less grey. This should give the room an identity of its own, while ensuring our home as a whole looks and feels cohesive.

The walls will stay white – it’s the same shade that we have in most rooms, and it works brilliantly with the ever-changing light in our house. We’ll warm them up with a beige linen headboard, and pale-oak furniture with clean, timeless lines. After a lot of thought we’ve decided on semi-sheer beige linen curtains for the window, with pull-down blackout blinds behind (we briefly contemplated installing shutters to match those in the living room, but Loki the cat loves sitting on the windowsill watching the world go by and we didn’t have the heart to put a shutter frame in his way!). Sculptural black wall lamps will provide a bit of depth and contrast, and I’ve already bought Ferm Living’s gorgeous ‘Arum’ design after spotting it in a sale. I’ll add further black accents through the curtain pole, cushions and door knobs, as well as incorporating artwork and ceramics with complementary beige and black elements.

1. Styling by Lotta Agaton Interiors; image by Erik Lafvender for Residence | 2. Walls in soft white (we used ‘White Chiffon’ by Dulux but it’s no longer available; Farrow & Ball’s ‘Wimbourne White’ is a close match) | 3. Pale oak furniture and flooring | 4. Beige linen headboard and curtains | 5. Artwork by Hayley McCrirrick at The Ode To | 6. Ceramics by Tracy Dixon | 7. ‘Calm’ cushion by Ferm Living | 8. Bench by Hübsch | 9. Styling by Danielle Siggerud; image by Line Klein | 10. Styling and image by Studio Laserow | 11. ‘Arum’ wall lamp by Ferm Living | 12. ‘Drift’ vase by Cooee Design | 13. ‘CH25’ lounge chair by Carl Hansen & Søn | 14. Image via Wonenonline.nl

We’ve ordered IKEA’s ‘PAX’ system for the wardrobes, as it’s cost-effective and can be customised with all sorts of internal add-ons. The white ‘GRIMO’ fronts are almost exactly the same shade as the walls and have a classic elegance that echoes our house’s original Victorian doors. The long-term plan is to box them in to give the appearance of fitted wardrobes, a little like the below from A.S. Helsingö (who use ‘PAX’ as the base for their designs), but we’ll have to do a bit of thinking to make it work!

I’m also excited to have room to accommodate an easy chair by the window for reading and relaxing – something I’ve always wanted. My dream would be Carl Hansen & Søn’s iconic ‘CH25’ chair, designed by Hans J. Wegner in 1949 and a truly timeless piece, but the budget may not stretch. I refuse to buy one of the many fakes on the market nowadays, so I need to decide whether to invest in one or not. It’s certainly something I’ll keep and treasure for decades to come if I do.

The flooring is still to be decided, too. We need to replace the carpet throughout the upstairs now that walls and doorways have been moved, and ideally I’d like the same matte oak planks that we have in the living room. We haven’t yet costed it up and it may be out of reach, but a large rug will hide much of the tatty old carpet in the meantime.

So there you go: our plans for a soft, minimalist beige bedroom. Now we just have to turn them into a reality…

Top image by Zara Home; bottom image by A.S. Helsingö; floorpans and ‘before’ photos by Abi Dare; mood-board images as credited