In the bedroom

Vincent Van Gogh, The bedroom 1888, oil on canvas, cm 72X90
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

..This time it's just simply my bedroom, only here colour is to do everything, and giving by its simplification a grander style to things, is to be suggestive here of rest or of sleep in general. In a word, looking at the picture ought to rest the brain, or rather the imagination. (letter 554 to his brother Theo)

The bedroom in the “Yellow House” in Arles is a warm and bright nest where Van Gogh stayed with his friends and in particular Gauguin. After the visit at the house, the painter Paul Signac wrote: ” Imagine the splendour of those whitewash walls on which they the colours catch the eye. I will not forget that room covered of delirious light landscapes.

Van Gogh describes this painting in no less than thirteen letters.
“The walls are pale violet. The floor is of red tiles. The wood of the bed and chairs is the yellow of fresh butter, the sheets and pillows very light greenish-citron. The coverlet scarlet. The window green. The toilet table orange, the basin blue. The doors lilac.”

The bedroom is the place where we pass a third part of our life. It reflects our inner world.
As the most private, personalised space in a home, the bedroom must necessarily reflect its user's lifestyle, his practical needs, aesthetic preferences and also his dreams, and this is exactly why a bedroom decor poses a challenge to interior designers. It takes very careful and detailed planning. There are pure aesthetic details, but also elements that must be chosen for their functionality.
To design an ideal bedroom for a client, the designer must get to know the client's innermost thoughts and ideas, his cultural background and upbringing, his temperament and his personal conception of a dream bedroom; besides the more tangible factors such as his needs in terms of the storage space provided or his taste in terms of the colour scheme he would like best. All these diverse factors govern aesthetic decisions, which explains the high degree of subjectivity involved. That is why one cant really set up aesthetic byelaws; nor can these byelaws find an easy acceptance, if indeed they are made.

The use of the room is an element to which it is necessary to give attention: in order to understand this variable, it must estimate the time and the quality of the permanence.
It can be only dedicated to the sleep and it remains unused in the diurnal hours: here, we have only the primary functions, like to sleep, to dress ourselves and to undress ourselves; or it can be a place of long permanence, where we have also accessory functions, like to study, to listen to some music, to do physical exercises, or where to find just an intimate and relaxing space.

As far as dimensions,, the way to live the room results from subjective tastes, but also from the objective situation of the spaces: large spaces allow to space mainly in tastes and styles, instead, the limited availability of spaces suggests a rationalization of the choice. The dimensions of the bedroom must necessarily be correlated to the use of the space.
If we have only the primary functions here, the room will be dimensioned to the fundamental furnitures and the indispensable spaces for their use; if we have also accessory functions here, we must to include some meter squared in the room to furnish an area to keep for the previewed activity. Bedroom is a place to unwind, let your hair down and put up your feet-all very casual and private activities.

It must be bright and well-aired (airy). It would be oriented towards east, in order to have the sun in the morning and a fresh room in the evening. Moreover, it would be better to choose a room not exposed to a road or to a public square.
Bedrooms benefit from a combination of functional and decorative lighting-relying on the former to set the scene and the latter to add interest.
The main lighting would be an indirect lighting, soft and diffused, in order to create an relaxing atmosphere. It must preview, beyond to the switch at the entrance of the room, one - or two, in case of a double room - switches at sides of the bed.
If the room is low, it would be better to prefer lights, colours, stretches, background paintings to increase the high of the space. For too high or too much lighting rooms, we can create a false ceiling or we can paint the ceiling in order to lower it and we can use warm and soft shapes lights (like the rice paper lamps).

To furnish the bedroom.

The bedroom must contains the essential furniture: the bed and the others elements must be adapted to necessities and to habits of the person. It must consider the furnishings in function to the proportions of the room: hard operation to do if we have a reduced dimension room. As far as the style, it must be chosen in relation to the personality.

The bed. Without a good sleep, we can’t expected too much of the two thirds part of the life!. Henri Matisse.

The common bed types are three:
wood: the more used materials are the multilayer or the plywood panels, both covered with veneer, or the solid wood. The ecological beds have a minimum part of metallic components, in order to avoid electromagnetic interferences, and they are created only with wood joints. The better finishes are obtained with water-varnishes, that have a low solvent content and they do not smell. The headboard in wood is often available with padding, both partial (that it leaves borders on sight, more or less thick) and total, and it is structured in order to be reclining separately. There are also some solutions that use the metallized finish (generally, aluminium colour) for the feet of the bed or for the entire structure, so the bed seems to be realized with two materials together, the wood and the metal.
metal: the more employed materials to are iron and the brass. The first one demands one has an hard working and also some handicraft participation. On the iron are applied various layers of painting: first, the anti-rust paint, after three or more hands of polyurethane enamel, and at the and the acrylic enamel, that it can be to water-enamel. The treatments of patination and waxing donate a pleasant ancient aspect. The second is generally more expensive than the iron bedstead, and it is more delicate: the brass costs approximately more of three times than the iron and if it is not well-produced, it will produce an unaesthetic opacification. The brass is brushed through some phases, then the galvanization process (immersion in acid in order to obtain of the bronzing and finally it is painted and dried in the furnace.
fabric: completely padded and covered with fabric. It gets a footing in the last ten years and it is loved for its sinuous shapes that give a pleasant softness feeling. Usually, the fabric bed is with removable covers (both the structure and the head of the bed the). It would be preferable the covering in cotton, treaty dirt-resistant (repellent) and sanforized (that is unshrinkable, non-shrink). A version of the fabric bed is the sommier (divan bed, sofa bed): before, only the spring-bed was defined with this term, today the name defines the fabric bed without the headboard (bedhead), sometimes it is used with a padded panel fixed to the wall, whose function is to replace the lacking bedhead.

The minimum dimensions of a double bed are 160 x 200 cm.
A large room allows to create particular furnishing’s solutions: for example we can use an angle bed or a round bed and we can arrange it far from the walls and we can lean it against a polyvalent structure, than servant for riporre, in order to expose or for other necessities.
If the problem is just the space and we don’t know where to put bags, reviews, tools for fitness away, we will choose the bed with container under the (sprung) bad base or the bed with drawers.

The disposition of the bed is important: we must orient it towards north, in order to follow the lines of the magnetic field. It can be placed in various positions:
- parallel as to the window: we don’t put it in front of the door and too near to the window, in order to avoid draughts;
- perpendicular as regards the window: this solution is adopted for rectangular rooms (when the window and the door are on the two long walls.) or squared ones, so we have the possibility to place the bed in front of the source of the natural light and in a more protected position as to the door;
- in the centre of the room: in this way, we can make a zone for study or relax, or one dressing room, out of the space behind the bed, in order to transform the bedroom in a multifunctional space.

If the bedroom is used also for accessory functions, and the height of the premises allows it, the bed will be placed under an easily attainable intermediate floor, with steps that can be used as drawers.

The bedhead must be protect by a wall without openings and it must be outside of the axis of the door, because the bed mustn’t show the feet to the door.
The bed mustn’t be cutted from the line that combines the door with the window or, at least, we can try to set it in way that the line door-window pass through the part of the feet.
It would be better to avoid to have the headboard on the adjacent wall to the drainage of the bath, or adjacent to a television or a computer.
It is preferable to avoid high or impending furnishings in front of or laterally to the bed and the exciting elements or reflecting, like mirrors.

If the room is in mansard, we will put the bed in the less oppressive parts, with the bedhead placed towards the higher wall, in order to have a space of breath over the head during the sleep.
If we have the beams are on sight, we must observe that they are not too much low and that they do not cut the bed horizontally: we can choose a canopy bed.
Wardrobes and beds are usually combined in the bedroom and are designed to make the most of the space available, they incorporate comfortable details such as doors which open with just a light touch and the indispensable interior lighting.

The wardrobe.

Wardrobes are usually from 1.90 to 2m high and 55cm deep and have interior steps for adjusting the shelves.

The closet with leaf doors wide 60 cm. demands a deep space at least 140-150 cm. for its opening, as the width of the doors. If we choose a wardrobe with less wide doors, the space requirement is reduced, but also the possibility to have an easily approach to the content.

As regards to the folding door model, the doors open to the outside folding itself to halves, if the doors are 60 cm wide, they will occupy 30 cm when they are opened.

The sliding doors model requires less space for the opening: with a depth approximately of 64-68 cm. (just a little bit larger the model with leaf doors) and the closing panels with a wide until 150 cm., it doesn’t take up even a centimetre in plus as regards to the space in front of the closet we it is opened.

In order to get round (out of) the space problems, an other solution is the bridge wardrobe placed against the same wall of the bed by the sides and above of it.

When we choose a wardrobe, the models with doors realized in light and good materials are preferable, because they facilitate the opening or the sliding and they improve the life of the hinges and of the other metallic parts.
For modern style’s lovers, there are a lot of proposal of glass, transparent, lacquered and translucent (translucid) wardrobe.
For classic style’s lovers, the interior decorators make proposal of cherry and walnut furniture in, to
elegant chest of drawers and important bedside tables.

Today, the walk-in wardrobe find more and more space in house and it is interpreted as a total closing of a wall, that hides an open equipment inside, but with boiserie or wooded or aluminium support poles and without dividing flanks.

We can create a separately room, or we can realized inside of the bedroom, delimiting its contours with plywood walls or predisposed structures. With various shapes and dimensions, it can be realized both in wide rooms and in smaller ones.

If the wardrobe is set at the sides of the bed or in front of it, we will have care to leave a free space for the opening of the doors and for the passage. Moreover, we must avoid, to put objects under the wardrobe: at psychological level it could produce an oppression feeling.
If the wardrobe is considered impending or cumbersome or if the room is used also for accessory functions, we will free the room of the presence of the wardrobe: we will set it in a small vain or in an access area arranged with the function of the walk-in wardrobe. If this space cannot be obtained, we can choose a clear multi-doors wardrobe matched with the colour of the walls, with a lot of inner space where we can to put the dresses back.
If the wardrobe has only two doors it is a good idea to put mirrors on the inside to be able to see oneself from behind as well as the front.

The colours

The choice of the colours and of the textiles is an important component. The right paintings of the walls cannot leave the other elements out of consideration: floor, furniture, tapestry, furnishings.
A good chromatic balance offers a lovely feeling of intimacy and harmony.
The purity of the white match with every type of furnishing, but, in domestic space, the use of the colour is never neutral.
According to the theories connected to the chromo-therapy, for the walls are preferable restful and relaxant colours, as blue, yellow, green, pink and lavender.
In interior design, the blue and its several shades, are considered as an optimal natural “sedative” and an effective remedy against the insomnia:

We can choose also the clear, tenuous, warm yellow.
The rose is connected to the childhood and to the game, but in the shading peach he would become particularly stimulating for the love.
We must choose the colours that go with the dimensions of the room. For small bedrooms, it would be preferable to choose tenuous and bright colours and light textiles; for wider rooms, colours can be chosen darker tones and heavier textile.
Bright colours and bold patterns advance and make up the space look smaller; while pale colours and small, all-over patterns recede, reflect light and make the space look bigger. Contrasting colours and textures in a room break it up into several different areas and make it seem smaller.

In a room with low ceiling, if we paint the walls with a darker tonality as regard to those one used for the ceiling, it will seems higher; if the room is high and we paint ceiling darker than the walls, it will seems smaller.
It is important to do colours tests and we mustn’t hit us by appearance: not always the ideas we have in mind correspond to the final result.

Ceramic floors and coating tiles

For you, some solutions chosen for your bedroom.

For parquet’s lovers, the warm wood veins are interpretated by ceramics, both on floors and walls. If the bath is inside the bedroom, we will pave without interruption both the spaces. A more complicated solution to do with true wood, because it is adapted not a bath.