How To Make Your Bedroom A Cocoon, According To Top Interior Designers

As the dark nights draw in, Hatta Byng gathers cosy bedroom ideas from the designers who know best, and makes the case for turning yours into a cocoon of contentment.

Cosy Bedroom Ideas From The Designers Who Know Best

Creating a wonderful bedroom for yourself is one of life’s greatest luxuries and comforts. ‘It’s a very private pleasure, like good underwear,’ says designer Fran Hickman, who recently created an all-white master bedroom in an otherwise boldly colourful house, with a beaded border bringing discreet detail to the plain walling. Most of us want our bedrooms to be places of retreat and calm.

But calm isn’t always enough: a bedroom can also be rejuvenating. As Willow Kemp, who, working with her mother Kit Kemp, has masterminded more bedrooms than many designers, explains: ‘your considerations should revolve around how you want to feel in the space.’

I felt cosseted and contented when I stayed at Firmdale‘s Warren Street Hotel in New York, transported completely from the bustle and noise of the city outside. I might not be able to live with so much pattern and colour day in and day out, but for a few days it was decidedly uplifting. More than anything, it was the fabric wallpaper that created an atmosphere of luxurious serenity, softening the acoustics as well as creating that sense of enclosure. I also found joy in the attention to detail. ‘It’s the little handcrafted elements, on the back of a chair for instance, that give a sense of intimacy,’ Willow says.

Hatta Byng’s bedroom at Brockfield Hall in Yorkshire is warmed by the de Gournay wallpaper

At home in Yorkshire, we sleep in the largest room in the house, which would once have been a first-floor drawing room. It is far too big, really, and took some getting used to. But again, it is the softness of the de Gournay paper on the walls that creates a wonderfully muffled, enveloping atmosphere. It is a paper that changes with the light and somehow manages to be uplifting in the morning and warm and serene in the glow of lamplight. We are lucky enough to have a sliver of a dressing room, and I have come to realise there is real luxury, especially if you are not the tidiest of people, in not letting any clothes or other detritus enter your bedroom. The only clutter is the piles of books on our bedside tables.

Calm doesn’t mean playing it safe. Beata Heuman tends to keep walls plain, so the view from the bed is restful, and put the drama and colour into the bed itself. She talks about her own bed in her London home, whose tester is a ‘happy and inspiring’ blue. ‘It’s tricky to hang artwork over a bed, so a flying tester decorates the wall behind the bed as well as adding drama.’ She’s not a fan of four-posters, finding the posts awkward in a room.

Drama in Beata Heuman’s bedroom at home comes from its electric blue tester

‘I often use a half tester where fabric walling is a step too far, or too expensive,’ agrees Hickman, ‘as the wall of fabric gives the same cocooning effect, as well as framing the bed.’ If you are happy with pattern, wallpaper can also give that enveloping effect. For Willow and her mother, it is all about the drama of the headboard and a high bed, ‘which elevates your view and makes more of the bed itself’. Firmdale beds always have a 50cm divan below the 25cm mattress.

I’ve been slow to understand the value of good sheets. Heuman was introduced to them while still at school: her friend’s father owned Swedish luxury bed linen company Mille Notti, and he was so appalled when he saw the nasty school duvets that he sent them all some of his own. Heuman still has these over 25 years later and they get better and better with age. ‘Once you start investing in really lovely bedding it is hard to go back. It makes such a big difference,’ she says, adding there is something ‘almost embarrassing’ about a bed without a bedspread.

‘It makes you feel dressed for the day,’ concurs Hickman. When budget allows, she takes her clients, and their bedroom schemes, to see Angela Wickstead, so they can pick out the perfect quality and border detailing for their bedlinen. ‘Clients love the finishing touch.’

A bedroom designed by Fran Hickman with a half tester to create a cocooning effect and help frame the bed

Because the bedroom is inevitably used in the dark, lighting matters enormously. If you are going to have overhead lighting, ensure you are not looking up at the bulb from your bed, and ensure the light is warm. Make sure you have ample light to read by: I only have lamps on our bedside tables and have to stretch out my arms so my book is not in the shade of the tester curtain. Better, Heuman suggests, is the snake-arm sort of wall light as well as a bedside lamp, so you avoid having two lampshades fighting with each other.

I’ve never been one to stew about sleep, and as a result I don’t get worked up about light entering the room. I like to wake up with the daylight rather than an alarm. And I’m much more keen that the curtain or blind fabric hangs well than that it has a stiff blackout lining. For clients that do want blackout, Hickman puts a fabric-covered roller blind behind the curtains. For her, a prerequisite is something soft below your feet as you step out of bed. If clients don’t want to spend money on a rug that is mostly covered by the bed, she will still ensure there is a ‘strip of something soft’ underfoot.

It’s late as I write and bed is beckoning. If time allows, I always try to shut my curtains earlier in the evening, so that when it is time for bed I enter the room in its full cosseting glory.

For more inspiration, see the major bedroom trends for 2026 and the best luxury beds in the world.