Bedroom Inspiration and My Interior Design Process

I’m kind of in-between several large, big budget renovations right now so I thought I’d start planning some other designs in the meantime. I’ve thought a lot recently about our main bedroom and I’ve struggled finding inspiration and styles that I’m completely in love with. So I’m going to take you through my 3-step design process to see what we can create together. Hopefully you can use this process when designing your own spaces! I’ll be sharing bedroom inspiration and my interior design process from start to finish!

For reference, here is my current bedroom. (Ignore the sloppy curtain situation, please).

Step One: Find Inspiration

I’ve mentioned before that finding inspiration on Pinterest (and Instagram) is my first step in my interior design process. I would recommend starting really broad and narrowing it down from there.

After doing this for a while and exploring my past pins, I picked a few of my favorites. I tried to keep them diverse to potentially narrow down which individual elements I liked from each image. Here’s what I was left with.

It’s a combination of light and moody, which is challenging when narrowing down a specific style. This brings us to step two.

Step Two: Find Your Style Elements

Now that I have my inspiration pulled together I need to narrow down what I love about each of these photos. A few observations can be made here–

1. Neutral colors.

Every room is very distinctly black, white, wood and hints of olive green. more specifically, white walls (mostly) with black and wood accents. The top right photo is the only fully black room, which I’m tempted to do but I think what I love about it is the drama and texture.

I think the look I’m going for can be achieved with keeping my black accent wall but adding some additional elements to further reinforce the drama and texture I’m looking for.

2. White Linen Bedding + Bed Frame

Now I don’t need inspiration photos to tell me how badly I want linen bedding. It just screams “relaxation” to me and if it wasn’t so expensive I would definitely have it already. I also know that we need a better bed frame. Unfortunately, the window situation prevents us from having much space for a headboard. However, I think that gives us a good opportunity to get creative!

I’m thinking a simple wooden, platform bed frame with white linens and olive green pillows to help pull in the accents I love.

3. Clean, vertical lines and wall treatments

This is clearly an observation taken from the vertical wooden slat wall which I have always LOVED. I have some fun ideas on how I could potentially combine that with our need for a headboard. As for the rest of the walls, I think the wainscoting in the bottom right photo paired with the black accent wall is the perfect combo!

I’ll plan on adding picture frame moulding on all the white walls as well as updating the baseboards throughout the room. On the black wall, we will do vertical wooden slats behind the bed in between the windows as a makeshift headboard.

4. Greenery

Now this is a given, but some of the inspiration I gathered had larger olive trees in the corner. I love both the drama and the natural green it adds to the room. I will keep my eye out for a large tree that would work in this space.

As you can see, breaking down specific elements from the inspiration photos I gathered really helped me find the direction I wanted to go in here and take the necessary steps to get there. Which brings us to the next step!

Step Three: Create a Mood Board

Mood boards are a great way to visualize your space. You can see all the elements together and make decisions on rugs, paint color, lighting etc. by seeing them all in one place. I do this ALL THE TIME. I personally use Adobe Illustrator but I’ve heard of other people using canva or even Google Slides, which are both free platforms and great alternatives.

To create your mood board, combine all the style elements you identified in step two on one “board.” In Illustrator, I just use a landscape 8.5×11 artboard and drag in all the elements I love for this room! Here’s how it turned out–

Now all that’s left is to bring this baby to life. I’d love to hear your feedback on my design plans and please let me know if taking you through this process was helpful for your own home designs!

I’ve got a few other designs in the works including our moody home office plans which you can check out here. (There’s also more mood board inspo there too!)