When life gets busy, you need a place to escape and catch your breath. Make your bedroom a haven with a zen-inspired design. An atmosphere featuring simplicity and purity of lines fosters harmony, balance, and relaxation. Discover ways to create a tranquil zen bedroom that lowers your stress levels from the moment you enter.
Choose the Right Color Palette
The first step toward making your bedroom more zen-like is color. A neutral or soft color palette is easy on the eyes and promotes a sense of calm. To bring more tranquility into your bedroom, incorporate soft shades of gray, blue, purple, or green. Additional colors that evoke a sense of relaxation include beige, cream, light pink, and brown.
Opt for Clean, Simple Design
For ultimate relaxation in your bedroom, use a minimalist approach with decor. Instead of a traditional bed frame and box spring, choose a zen bed frame featuring a low platform with short legs or even a floor platform. Add side tables and chairs with clean, simple lines. Keep figurines and collectibles to a minimum, and avoid too many pictures, posters, and other wall decorations. In fact, lots of blank wall space is a hallmark of minimalist style. When you decorate, choose items that have meaning like special photographs or family mementos.
Relax in a Cozy Bed
While your bedroom may appear to be a zen retreat, it should feel comfortable too. Start with a quality mattress that promotes healthy body alignment, and cover it with soft, natural fabrics like an organic cotton comforter and a mohair throw. To avoid visual clutter, pick bedding products without busy patterns. For a luxurious, spa-like feel, choose a fluffy white comforter, high-quality bed sheets, and best-for-you pillows.
Promote Serenity with Feng Shui
Feng shui is an ancient Chinese principal in which furniture arrangement creates a flow of energy in a room. Feng shui experts contend that healthy energy flow promotes serenity and relaxation. The founder of The Holistic Home Company, Laura Benko, suggests placing your headboard up against a wall for better energy flow but leaving the sides, the foot, and under the bed clear. She says, “It’s important that energy circulates under and around the sides of your bed, or over time you yourself will feel ‘up against a wall,’ confined, or limited.”
Keep Lighting Soft and Natural
As many restaurant patrons know, lighting plays a big role when it comes to a relaxing ambiance. To set a peaceful mood in your bedroom, steer clear of harsh overhead lighting, and make the most of natural light with sheer window treatments. If you have a strong central light fixture, then install a dimmer switch, and scatter light throughout the room with floor and table lamps or wall-mounted sconces. Remember, incandescent halogen bulbs save more energy than regular bulbs, and they emit a warmer glow.
Instill Calm with Fragrance
Fresh linen, sandalwood, lavender, rose, and jasmine — certain fragrances offer an almost immediate calming effect. Consequently, it makes sense to introduce aromatherapy products or scented candles into your zen bedroom decor. Instill calm and tranquility with essential oil diffusers, beeswax candles, and a refreshment area featuring a pitcher of cucumber or citrus-infused water and pretty glasses.
Free Your Bedroom of Electronic Devices
Few things interfere with zen room decor like electronics. When envisioning a peaceful retreat, wires, boxes, cables, and ambient-light screens just don’t fit in. For ultimate relaxation, free your bedroom of electronic devices, or keep them hidden in cupboards, drawers, or cabinets until needed.
Bring the Outdoors In
There’s nothing like a walk in a quiet wood to reduce stress levels. To make your bedroom more relaxing, take a tip from nature. Bring in natural accents like bamboo floor mats, woven baskets, and earthen pottery. Add living indoor plants like bonsai trees, ferns, and succulents, or hang a terrarium for a uniquely calming look.
Add Soothing Sound to the Mix
For even more nature-inspired tranquility, add a water feature to your bedroom. Whether you’re chilling out on a lazy weekend or getting ready for bed, the sound of trickling water lulls listeners into deep relaxation. Water features come in many styles, from table and floor fountains to wall-mounted products. A variety of construction materials include resin, glass, fiberglass, stone, copper, and stainless steel, so it isn’t difficult to find something that fits.
Keep Your Bedroom Clutter-Free
It’s almost impossible to relax in a messy or cluttered space. In fact, research from the UCLA Center on Everyday Lives and Families shows that clutter raises stress levels in women, so make sure to straighten and clean regularly. Remove anything that doesn’t belong in your zen bedroom, and invest in cabinets, cupboards, trunks, dressers, or storage boxes to keep remaining belongings organized and hidden. Find furniture that does double duty, such as a storage bench for the foot of the bed.
To make your bedroom a peaceful and calming haven, consider color, design, comfort, and lighting. Take advantage of a few more tips and tricks, and let CORT Furniture Rental help you find just the right furniture to create a perfect zen-like atmosphere.
