One of the reasons we decided to buy our new house was because of the master bedroom. Even though our new house is slightly larger than our old property, we actually lost a bedroom upstairs going from a 5 bed to a 4 bed. However, this is because the bedrooms are bigger. I wrote about our new house here. 

I was supposed to be writing a blog post about a quick revamp I had planned for the kitchen this week. Even though we still have plenty of boxes left to unpack and I cannot find my running trainers anywhere, I decided it was much more important to cover up the blue glass backsplash we had in the kitchen as it just upset my eyes a little bit.

I bought some self-adhesive vinyl tiles from Homebase and set about trying to put them up on Thursday, but realised they were designed for the floor only and ended up having to put them up with blue tack so I could complete a brand campaign I had signed up to before moving house and commit the ultimate #instasham

As I always leave everything to the last minute, I proceeded to spend all of Friday trying to decide what to write for my next blog post and I ended up down a bedroom inspiration tunnel full of panelled walls, velvet beds and rugs. Aha! I will work on my master bedroom, I thought. Those trainers can wait…

The new master bedroom

Our last bedroom was probably only slightly larger than a super king size bed in the old house and Mr B and I would have to perform the floss every morning trying to get dressed and move around one another. We had to repurpose the 5^th bedroom into a walk-in wardrobe (or very messy dumping ground) as there just wasn’t enough space to put two wardrobes in.

I knew before viewing the house that the master bedroom was going to be something special. It had huge patio doors leading onto a large south west facing balcony to start with, built-in wardrobes and an en-suite. When we viewed the property, we were not disappointed.

Plans for the Master Bedroom

Oddly enough, it wasn’t the patio doors or balcony that got me first thinking about the design for our master bedroom, it was the very outdated built-in wardrobes. Immediately I wanted to rip them out, but as we weren’t able to have wardrobes in our last bedroom, I decided I wanted to keep them and try and modernise them a little.

I’ve seen quite a few people on Instagram update their outdated wardrobes recently to great affect so I did a little research. A lick of paint and some new handles would have them looking like new. 

However, when I saw this wardrobe design, it started the ball rolling for a theme. Living so close to the sea and my love for nature, I wanted to create a tropical design that helped connect the outside, in through our balcony and into the master bedroom.

My love for wallpaper continues

I started looking for wallpaper and fell down a tropical print rabbit hole. I really loved the colours and print of this Photowall Tangled Jungle mural so started creating a bedroom design around that.

I realised that I loved the wallpaper that much that I didn’t really want to chop it up and put it on the wardrobe, so I decided to make this mural the main feature and build the rest of the room around that.

When you have such a statement piece of wallpaper in a room, it’s really best to keep everything simple and in muted tones so as not to distract too much attention from it. I liked the fact that the print centred around sage greens and neutral tones of a jungle, but had underlying pink shades as well.

Paint and flooring

I’m seeing a lot of sage green around at the moment and I have always been a huge fan of this colour. I decided that the rest of the walls would be painted in sage green and as we are pulling up the carpet and having exposed floorboards, a large jute rug would be the ideal choice to put down under the bed.

Furniture

I’ve always loved a button backed headboard in the master bedroom and wanted to introduce a bit of pink into the room so this bed from sofa.com was the ideal choice. To finish off the room, I wanted to add a mid-century desk (every room should have a bit of mid-century pieces in the house!) and again, didn’t want to detract too much from the wallpaper, so added some sleek but chic bedside tables.

 

The finishing touches

To finish with, I added this fabulous light shade from made.com and some simple cushions and plants to give it that tropical feel.

But wait, stop there! I haven’t finished yet! I really love this master bedroom design; it has a wonderful Bali beach vibe to it which is perfect for this house. But I kept coming back to the initial wardrobe design that I loved and knew with this scheme, wallpapering the wardrobes as well would just be too much.

And then I had a light bulb moment, I actually own the large round chandelier that I loved in @smalltownhouse It is still sat in a box in our garage and I’d never got round to finding a place for it. So maybe I could design a scheme around that?

A Contemporary Traditional Master Bedroom

I decided to look at a more traditional theme with vintage pieces, statement rugs and jewel tones. I really wanted to keep the idea of having wallpaper on the wardrobe, so I added panelling to the back wall and a fabulous dark green bed to provide a rich colour to the master bedroom.

Paint and flooring

I’ll be using a soft pink on the walls, like Dulux Heritage DH Blossom or Farrow & Ball Sulking Room Pink. The floors will still be stripped and I have been coveting this rug for ages now!

Furniture and accessories

I wanted to keep the same style bed and desk from before, but go for a deep green instead of pink as the headboard. I changed the bedside tables to an acorn wood style so they made an impact against the pink and the last thing to add, the wallpaper! I think this wallpaper is perfect for the colour scheme in our master bedroom and will look really good on the wardrobes.

So, which one?

I created these two schemes and absolutely loved both of them for our master bedroom. I put it to the vote on my Instagram stories and it wasn’t much help. The vote ended on 50/50 However, so many people messaged me saying they loved both but thought the tropical beach theme would work better in our house.

After toing and froing about the design all week, I decided to go with the contemporary traditional bedroom design for our master bedroom. I loved the grown-up feel to it and it would mean I could incorporate the built-in wardrobes which started it all off.

However, we are hoping to add a ground floor guest annexe to our house once we have renovated with the potential to Airbnb it out, so the tropical bedroom would be perfect in there. It’s a win win situation really, I get my dream designs in both bedrooms!

Which one do you prefer?

Mel x