A small basic bedroom got a luxurious hotel-style look when Finnish Design Shop’s interior designer updated the space with furniture and textiles.
WHITE WALLS, yellowed parquet, cupboards on one wall and a window on another – a bedroom layout typical of quite a few modern apartments. The surface area of the bedroom had also been minimized to leave more space for the other rooms.
Even when there is little room for anything else besides the bed and furniture can only be placed in one way, there are solutions for compensating the lack of square meters.
A standard bedroom in a standard apartment does not have to be dull and dreary even if the space itself is not that appealing. Colors and genuine high-quality materials help transform even the most modest of rooms into a hotel-style oasis with character.
Dingy bedroom as a blank canvas
The subject of the makeover was the bedroom of a rental apartment, barely accommodating a regular 160-cm-wide double bed. Since space needed to be left in front of the cupboards to allow for the doors to open, the bed had to be placed quite close to the wall with the window.
As the walls were in rather poor condition, the first thing to do was to fill the holes and give the walls a fresh coat of paint. The walls were painted with Tikkurila’s warm-white shade Paper, which freshens up the space without accentuating the yellowness of the moldings and cupboard doors.
Plan and implementation
As the objective was to elevate the look of the bedroom, but there was no room for anything extra, the bed was made plusher using a wide headboard familiar from hotels. The headboard only takes up a few centimeters of space between the wall and the bed, framing the bed and instantly upgrading the look of the room.
A Familon headboard was selected to complement the existing bed from the same collection. Naturally, the headboard and bed can also be picked from different manufacturers if the bed is covered by a bed skirt or bedspread, for example.
Designed by Joanna Laajisto and made of ash, stools from Made By Choice’s Airisto collection were placed as nightstands on both sides of the bed and partly in front of the headboard. Without taking up too much space, the sturdy stools provide a handy surface for putting things down, and their simple shape is a perfect match for the small room.
An impressive headboard is best complemented with sumptuous, hotel-style bedding in a variety of materials and patterns. The down duvets and pillows by Finnish Joutsen not only look soft and plush but also remain so when you remember to fluff them regularly. The duvet covers and pillowcases in Magniberg’s Pure collection have the same quality as those used in a luxury hotel: their silky-smooth surface with a beautiful sheen makes sleeping a particularly enjoyable experience.
Even though a bedspread adds a nice finishing touch, there is no need to hide beautiful bedding. A smaller bedspread can be placed across the bottom of the double bed, or the top of a full-size bedspread can be folded down to give an enticing glimpse of the duvet cover underneath. In this case, the look was finished with a Lily of the Valley cushion designed by Klaus Haapaniemi and an elegant Collect throw by &Tradition.
• All headboards at Finnish Design Shop >
Home for clothes
As the bedroom window was already equipped with both blinds and blackout shades, there was no real need for curtains. However, the curtain rail at the ceiling provided a handy way of covering the heating pipes running along the window wall. All it took was a single white linen curtain to hide the pipes and soften the acoustics of the room.
There was just enough space left in front of the curtain for Artek’s sleek Clothes Tree 160. The white coat rack is perfect for hanging clothes that have been worn but are not yet dirty, and hanging a bathrobe in the rack gives an instant hotel vibe.
Final touch with lighting
Bedrooms are seldom in need of bright lighting, but it is always useful to get a good source of ambient light for cleaning the room, for example. Louis Poulsen’s Radiohus pendant made of opal glass is ideal for that purpose. Thanks to its simple design, the lamp is also easy to combine with luminaires from other collections.
The lamps put by the bed were selected based on versatility. Both sides of the bed were equipped with a lamp by New Works: a Material floor lamp with an adjustable head and a luminous flux suitable for reading, and a rechargeable Kizu table lamp perfect for creating a calm evening atmosphere by dimming the light. Both lamps are partly made of marble.
The set was completed with a small painting discovered via a local art lending service. The painting repeats the colors of the bedding and is hung in a way that continues the play of symmetry and asymmetry, minimalism and maximalism seen in the rest of the room.
Get inspired
Airisto stool
Kizu table lamp
Collect wool blanket
Big Waffle bathrobe
Pure Sateen pillowcase
Radiohus pendant
Polku bedspread
160 clothes tree
Interior designer Riikka Soini-Ferraguto, who works at Finnish Design Shop’s showroom, appreciates functional and beautiful design and strives to make long-term choices. Natural materials and vintage finds give any space character and softness.
See also:
• Finnish Design Shop's showroom >
• All items at Finnish Design Shop >
Text and images: Riikka Soini-Ferraguto