navy bedroom – The Interiors Addict

I shared our master bedroom on Instagram last month but I thought I’d give it a place here on the blog too as it was super popular! Read to the end for details and links for everything.

Long time readers know our bedroom used to be moody and navy (and the story behind how wrong I got that wall colour first go!), but after a few years of this look (below) I’ll be honest with you, I just wasn’t vibing it anymore! And that’s okay! Our tastes change.

BEFORE The bedroom was dark and moody | Image by Jacqui Turk

We also got new windows which was a big deal for this room and that’s because the window in this room was the worst of all our old windows: timber, rotting and had even got to the point where it wouldn’t open anymore. Healthy, huh?! Thank goodness we could open the window in the attached en suite!

The old window was previously hidden behind plantation shutters (thank goodness as it would have really killed my aesthetic!) but they were making the already mediocre natural light even worse. Given the opportunity to get rid of the shutters when we got our new windows (they wouldn’t fit back on anyway and I gave them away on Facebook to some very happy renovators!), I was thrilled to swap to roman blinds! Hello daylight!

I bought the frames for these prints from Temple & Webster and then ordered custom size mats online

The dark and moody hotel look worked for our bedroom before because it was a bit, well, dingy! But now we’ve let the light in and I’m all about light, bright and airy! I really wanted to channel spring in this room and for it to be a little less uptight, more casual, light in all senses of the word, and fresh! We also ditched the grey carpet and replaced it with the laminate floor we have elsewhere in our home and that made a huge difference to the light in the room. It immediately felt much bigger too. And oh, how I love to be able to mop in here, especially as this room is, for whatever reason, the dustiest place in the house!

Changing the wall colour of course made a major difference. We went for another Haymes Paint colour, Chinchilla Fur, which I know well because I already have it in our kitchen on the panelling and more recently used it for the panelling in the en suite so this ties the rooms together nicely. It looks totally different in the kitchen mind you (but I love both versions!), which is why you need to always get your sample pots, or use the clever The Big Paint Sample stickers like I do. Don’t think you’ve picked a dark navy off the fan deck and then come home to find the painters have turned your room bright primary blue! Yes, that was me!

The wall colour and timber accents tie in with our ensuite

I hoped my custom made fuchsia velvet bedhead might still work in here but it just didn’t. I left it for a few weeks before making the decision to swap it out (and again, it has gone to a new home where it will be very loved!). Long term readers will remember that we finally worked out this was the best orientation for this room despite a bed under the window not being the ideal. No off the shelf bedhead fits under this huge, low window, but I had a clever idea to hack the super affordable Kmart rattan one by cutting the bottom off the legs. I’m so happy with this. The bedhead isn’t super obvious because of all the pillows and because there’s not much height there, but I didn’t want to have nothing either! I was really trying not to spend too much on this room.

The bargain Kmart bedhead with the legs cut down to size

The linen is just divine. I mean I’m lucky to have been gifted a lot of gorgeous linen in my time, but when LinenMe let me choose from their collection, I picked these sheets and quilt cover for our guest bedroom but then had to steal them for the master! They were just perfect and I cannot enthuse enough about how good this stuff feels too. You can see the quality and I know they will be on high rotation.

I feel like good bedsides (much like entertainment units) are really hard to find so when I found the perfect ones at Life Interiors I had to have them. The oak and marble combo was perfect, and I’ve worked out one drawer is essential for all those bits and bobs, but two leads to them being full of rubbish! The previous navy ones were gorgeous but a bad combo with all the dust we get in this room. The marble is another light surface to reflect light too. I like that they’re not solid which adds to the feeling of space and light.

The timber floating shelf on the right was originally destined for the office but was too long for that room and one day it hit me it would be the perfect thing under the mirror (a wedding gift many years ago). It just works! And I love another timber accent for a bit of warmth.

The wardrobe doors got an upgrade with new satin brass handles from Gainsborough to replace the standard chrome ones and we had recently upgraded all our internal handles with beautiful new ones from their Avant range too. It’s amazing how these little changes add up. Pops of pink and gold elements are dotted everywhere, which is a bit of a Jen signature and ties it all together.

A reality of sharing this room with my husband is that we cannot survive and keep a reasonably tidy room without what I call a ‘chairdrobe’ and this boucle one is a work of art! With its timber and brass elements it was the perfect choice.

Our bedroom isn’t perfect. It’s not that big for a master (3.5 x 4m) and it’s a bit of an awkward shape, not least because the only way to make it work is to have the bed under the window. It doesn’t have a walk-in as this house was built in the sixties, but do you know what, for all its imperfections, it looks and feels pretty great now! And aside from how it looks, with functioning windows that open, air con and a hygienic hard floor, it it is so much healthier too, and for somewhere you spend so much time, that’s a big plus!

I’m still dreaming of adding a skylight (with an automatic blind of course). We shall see!

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Shop the look

Floor: QuickStep Impressive Ultra in classic oak beige

Blind: Tuiss Blinds Online roman blind in bijou linen oatmeal

$159 rattan queen bedhead: Kmart

Oak floating shelf: RJ Living

Window: Carinya Select Double Hung by Alspec

Cushions: Society of Wanderers, Castle & Things and Aura Home

Bed linen: LinenMe

Art: Laura White original (peonies), Kirsten Jackson Gallery (one of many in my home!) timber framed print on canvas and The Poster Club at Life Interiors

Gold frames for paper art prints: Temple & Webster

Bedsides: The Avalon Marble Bedsides from Life Interiors

Chair(robe): The Blake Boucle Armchair from Life Interiors

Rug: Echo Cotton Rug from Temple & Webster

Paint: Chinchilla Fur by Haymes

Lamps: No longer available at Target, with upgraded shades from Freedom

Photography: Jacqui Turk

Some rooms are more challenging than others. Our master bedroom has been one of them. Big time! Where do I start?! Before we moved in, I hastily picked what I thought was a nice shade of navy from a colour chart as I wanted to get the whole house painted while it was still empty. The first time I saw the colour in real life, it was too late. It was terrible. I mean really bad. I’m talking daycare centre primary blue with a hint of peacock. I could have cried but, rather than admit how badly I, Interiors Addict, had failed, I attempted to live with it for a while and make it work. It did not.

It’s also a really tricky shaped room to work with. It is long and rectangular with a window on the longest wall. The window is so wide and so low, you couldn’t have any bedhead in front of it, and I can’t live without a bedhead. I just can’t. So we had the bedhead against the shorter wall, meaning when you walked in, the side of the bed was directly in front of you, rather than the head of the bed. There must be something about that from a Feng Shui perspective, because I’ve had a bedroom where you didn’t walk in and see the bed facing you before and that also felt all wrong.

With wardrobes on wall three and the door to the en suite on wall four, I was out of options. That room did my head in so badly that we moved out, and into a different bedroom at the front of the house. With a four-bedroom house and one child at the time, we had options! But it meant we didn’t have the en suite which seemed a real shame.

We lived like this for a few months and eventually had the room (destined to be a guest room) painted the perfect shade of navy (Haymes Paint Stormy Blue). If we had to cover up that hideous bold blue, we might as well do it with a dark colour, right?! Then it hit me: if we had a bedhead custom made to fit under that big window, we could probably make it work. Enter: Heatherly Bedheads, who I had worked with before. I had no hesitation that their classic Lincoln design was the way to go, and had been loving the trend for extra-wide bedheads, so it made perfect sense to extend it to exactly the width of the window. When I saw they had a fuchsia velvet called Lipstick, it was like a sign. Regular readers will know I’m rarely seen without my signature bold lip!

Damian took a little more convincing. I mean, who can blame him? When your wife tells you you’re getting an oversized pink velvet bedhead “and I promise it won’t look girly,” you have to wonder. Even I was a little anxious about my choice, but with such dark and moody walls and considering a lot of the bedhead would be covered by pillows and bedsides, it needed to pop. And pop it does!

This bedhead is so bloody perfect, why would you ever think the bed wasn’t always destined to go under the window? If there was ever an argument for a custom bedhead, this is it! So we can now use our master bedroom as it was intended, we have the en suite and it’s one of my favourite rooms in the house. It took a while to get here, but boy, was it worth it!

Those of you who remember our wedding decor five years ago will know navy and fuchsia has been one of my favourite colour combos for a long time! And as for brass accents, well you can never have enough!

It took a while to decide on art, and Damian was right when he said we needed something black and white to pop on the navy walls. When I discovered Secret Weapon Creative, the hardest part was choosing which of Bree’s prints to pick. I’m sure I’ll buy more for elsewhere in our home later.

I’m delighted with this bedroom now. Our old apartment bedroom was a very hard one to beat. It was probably twice this size with amazing natural light and two windows. I resigned myself to never loving a bedroom as much, but this one’s so unique, so reflective of my taste, so bold and with the extra satisfaction that comes with making a challenging room work for us, I think I might just have proven myself wrong!

And, just for fun, here’s what it looked like as the previous owner was moving out…