Have you ever boarded in a family’s shoebox-esque spare room? Habitated a walk-in robe sized space in a rundown apartment? Found yourself sleeping in a spot that an architect, after a few minutes of bewildered consideration, would eventually come to categorise as a “hallway”? Yes, inner-city living comes at a cost – but the real loser is, and always will be, our bedrooms.
Now that you’re a few years older, raking in a decent income and generally living your best life, you’ve probably now landed a fairly sizeable room. Praise be, right? Better yet, this space has some damn-fine potential. But all those years of squatting on a mattress, spending hours behind a locked door to avoid your horrendously annoying European roomies and such means you have no idea where to start when undertaking a bedroom facelift.
To get the 411 on key considerations for this style overhaul, we turned to the sage wisdom of Freedom buyer, Myelz Moss. Given that he’s been entrusted to be one of the talented humans at the helm of such an iconic brand’s product selection, you know he’s across what’s good. Oh, and I know that this might sound like a bit of overkill given that we’re discussing home styling and not brain surgery, but prepare to be woke. This guy’s tips are, in our not-so-humble opinion, bloody game-changing.
KNOW THY DIMENSIONS
To kick off, Moss stresses the importance of knowing the parameters of what you’re working with. Get to know the dimensions of your room like the back of your hand, because as you’ll soon realise, even the mildest assumption can royally screw you over.
“To make sure you have considered everything, use tape or paper to map out the dimensions on your floor,” says Moss. “Remember to use the exact measurements of the bed frame you’re looking at as some have deeper headboards that can add surprising amounts of length to the bed.”
Do you really want to drop $3K on a bed frame and headboard, only to realise that the 10CM depth of the latter has ended your ability to move about your room freely? Ain’t an ideal situation, and one that happens far too often.
MATTRESS FOR SUCCESS
You’ll roughly spend a third of your life sleeping (depending on your proclivity to participate in benders). So Moss’ advice when it comes to purchasing a mattress is simple: “Invest money in it.”
In addition to dropping entirely worthwhile cash on it, Moss also suggests paying extra attention to a potential purchase’s edge support. “You sit on the edge of your bed a lot to do things like tying your shoes, putting on pants,” he says. If it doesn’t have decent edge support, the mattress will collapse quickly – thus ruining any hopes you may have of ever feeling well-rested.
He also flagged a buyer-beware warning for those ‘ship-to-your-door‘ mattress suppliers that are floating around at the moment. Most of these are made from foam, and if you give it some thought, you’ll realise that that’s not an ideal material to be snoozing on. If you are going to go down the foam path, Moss reckons you may as well pick up a slab from Clark Rubber – it’ll cost you less and do the same thing.
For a guaranteed good night’s sleep, opt for an inner-spring mattress. That doesn’t necessarily mean dropping offensive amounts of cash on one either. Freedom, for instance, stocks a brand called Whitehaven that produces Australian made, handcrafted quality mattresses – it’s packed with similar tech and materials to the big wig labels you might have heard of, without costing a fortune.
GET IN A GOOD (BED) FRAME OF MIND
When it comes to assessing what bed frame, bed head or ensemble to purchase, there are a few things to keep in mind.
“Live in the city? Opt for a bed frame,” says Moss. Navigating an ensemble base up the notoriously narrow stairs of terrace houses, for instance, is literally impossible. You want something that’s deconstructable to facilitate moves in the future. Ensembles can be great though if you’re in a position to get one to where it needs to be – most modern iterations are built with additional, and precious, storage.
Back on the bed frame front, do yourself a solid and poke around at your option’s slats. ‘Posture slats‘ – the ones where the wood bows upward – were a huge trend a few years back, and for a lot of retailers, they never dropped it. The cooked thing about posture slats is that they essentially destroy your mattress. So much so, that if you read the fine print of your mattress’ warranty, you’ll see that using it on a posture slatted bed legit voids its warranty. Steer clear, folks.
While the mammoth headboards in market atm could give most of us a visually-prompted orgasm, they might not be a good move for your space. “The taller your headboard, the smaller your room will feel. Make it compact if you’re working with a small space.”
BE BEDDER THAN ALL THE REST
“You spend a lot of time in your bed. You need good bedding, and more often than not you get what you pay for here. Forget polyester, and if you can see through it, it will look cheap. Get something that’s organic cotton, or linen – and don’t be fooled by thread count.”
Yes, the whole thread count fiasco. While legit sheets with a high thread count are the bomb, there’s a technical workaround cheaper retailers are using to achieve TCs above 1000. The process they’re using ain’t the real McCoy, and you should instantly be able to tell the difference by feeling them. Moss recommends using suspicion when purchasing 1000 thread count sheets that are less than $150: “if it’s lower than that, it’d be very sketchy.”
At the end of the day, great bedding lasts longer and looks/feels a hell of a lot better. So treat yo’self to some grown up bedding that you can luxuriate in. Moss’ tip? “Get bedding that mixes and matches so you can alternate washes but keep things interesting with fewer matching sets. Hot combos right now are charcoal and cement, mint and dusty pink, and the classic favourite white on white on white.”
LIGHT UP YOUR LIFE
“I think matchy-matchy is dead. Most of the time, bedrooms aren’t that big. There’s no need for two bedside lamps. You just need one. If you do have that lamp on one side, balance it out with something else on the other side. Or a personal favourite: rather than take up precious space, hang a statement pendant above your bedside.”
Given that most of us are lying in bed to watch TV, do a bit of light work on our lappys, or are aimlessly scrolling through our phones, Moss makes a great point. Lamps used to serve a hugely practical purpose: facilitating reading. These days, they’re chiefly decorative.
DON’T PAINT THE TOWN RED
Your bedroom is either for relaxing or sleeping, right? Anything that detracts from your ability to unwind or doze off should be avoided, which is why you shouldn’t be painting your walls in an outrageous colour.
“Don’t introduce aggressive or very bright colours in the bedroom,” says Moss. “If you paint your wall yellow, it’s going to reflect the morning light and blind you. Pull back on the bold colours, neutrals are your friend when it comes to a zen space you can relax in.“
If you do want some colour in the space, there’s a heap of workarounds: “Introduce colour with pillows or through your quilt cover“. If colour on your walls is non-negotiable, then stick to a feature wall using soft pastels or for a stronger statement like a dark navy or charcoal.
LET YOUR STORAGE BE THE STATEMENT
From a commercial perspective, getting creative with storage solutions is a huge focus for Moss. Spaces are getting smaller and smaller, so all of us need nifty solutions that don’t look like a cat’s anus.
You can start simple, with things like your bedside table. Make sure it doubles as storage by selecting ones with a large-ish draw, and a big enough surface area to house a lamp, an iPhone and all those things you need at arm’s length. Then, begin assessing storage solutions with a more left-of-centre mindset.
This means avoiding the trap of grabbing everything from the bedroom department, folks. Statement side tables make great bedsides, buffets create interesting storage solutions and book cases can be your sneaker collection’s new home. Using units with shelving instead of everything being in drawers means you can adjust the height of shelves and make your storage more bespoke to you.
Lastly, Moss suggests getting around statement pieces like an ottoman with in-built storage to really make sure you have enough room to keep all your crap. Those bad boys look so good at the end of a bed, so that’s a bandwagon I think most of us are more than happy to jump on.
Speaking of bandwagons, I really need to get off the living-area-focused one I’m currently on – and I’m sure I’m not alone in that. Let’s stop neglecting our poor bedrooms, folks. We spend an arguably unhealthy amount of time in ’em, so it’s definitely worth giving them a hefty amount of TLC.
If you’re keen to do just that, then make Freedom your go-to. Their bedroom range is truly too fabulous to function. Oh, and with their interest-free financing options and A+ Myfreedom members club, organising a bedroom revamp might be on the cards sooner than you might have thought. Head HERE to shop their offensively chic range.
