If you don’t have tons of natural light in your bedroom, here are ten great tips on how to utilize the light that you do have to brighten your room up and make your space feel light and open!
The easiest way to make your room feel brighter is to use bright colors in your accent pieces. Putting bright pillows on your bed will attract your eye to the focal point of your room, and the vibrant colors will instantly brighten up your space. Try pairing several colors with a white comforter for a bright and light combo, or go all out and double down with a bright comforter and a bright throw blanket to match your bold pillows!
Sometime the color of our floors can really darken our rooms, and re-staining can be a lot of work and a lot of money. For an easy and cheap solution, buy an area rug! Get a rug in a fun color, or go for a clean and bright white. The rug will cover up a significant amount of your floors and brighten the space, making your room instantly appear lighter!
Since we’re talking about bedrooms, privacy is key. If you want to cover up your windows, go with a sheer curtain instead of heavy blinds. They will let more light through, and block less of your window. Natural light is incredibly important in dark spaces, so you want to utilize as much of it as you can. Using sheer curtains provides privacy while still letting all that natural light come through! Not to mention, they can be a super great opportunity to bring in a pop of color!
Reflective surfaces are a great way to take advantage of the natural light that you already have in your room. These surfaces capture the light and send it back into your room, essentially doubling the amount of light you started out with. Accent pieces like mirrored picture frames, glass tables, trays, or even mirrored lamps are a great way to add a little extra light to a dark room. To get the most out of your reflective surfaces, make sure to position them opposite your window so they can directly catch the light!
Nothing brightens up a space quite like flowers do! They’re naturally bright and airy, and they instantly freshen up your room. Fresh flowers are obviously ideal, but if you don’t have the patience (or the budget) to support live plants, silk flowers or wax plants are a great alternative. They look incredibly real, and they require little to no effort. Place your flower arrangement in an area of your room that doesn’t get as much sun as other areas do for a quick way to brighten your room. You can even add a cohesive element and place several similar arrangements all around your room to help tie everything in your space together!
White tends to scare people when it comes to bedrooms because it can feel sterile and lifeless, but if you use white the right way it can be one of the best and quickest ways to brighten your room. If you balance out the white with warm accents and woods, you can keep your room looking crisp and full of light without having it look cold or uninviting. A white comforter, area rug, or bedside tables are great ways to bring light into the space without going too overboard and make your space feel completely void of color.
Mirrors are great for making your room look bigger, but they’re also an awesome way to brighten your room. Floor length mirrors will provide you with more light than you’ll know what to do with if you put it in the right place in your room, and accent mirrors hung up on your wall can make a great focal piece. If your room is on the smaller side, mirrors also do a great job of making spaces appear bigger than they actually are.
Metal surfaces are great at reflecting light, so when it comes to bringing light into your bedroom, metallic accents are a no-brainer. Metal lamps, lighting fixtures, picture frames, and wall accents are subtle ways to bring in metal without making your room feel hard or cold, and complimenting metal pieces with warmer wood creates a beautiful balance that will make your room feel cozy and soft. It’s also a great way to soften the modern vibe if modern and contemporary isn’t really your thing!
It should be pretty obvious that in a room where natural light is few and far between that you should probably keep the area in front of your windows clear if you want to brighten your room. Anything that is going to potentially block the light from spreading out as much as it can should be avoided and moved. Your windows (even the area below them) should be kept open, and keep the furniture and decor to a minimum near your windows. This way, your windows become the focal point of the space and you allow as much brightness and warmth to flood your room as physically possible. It’s also important to keep your windows clean. You’d be surprised how much light you’re keeping out by not keeping your windows clean!
Sometimes, the amount of natural light available is just not enough to brighten your room. If you find yourself in a similar situation, don’t stress. Just create your own light! Invest in a few floor lamps, a fun chandelier lighting fixture, some lamps for your side table, or even some fun paper lanterns to hang from the ceiling! There are so many ways to create artificial light, and you even have quite an array of options when it comes to bulbs! There are bulbs that offer a softer, warm glow, florescent bulbs, eco-friendly options, you name it! So make sure to do your research and find out which options best suit your needs and add a little extra light to your life!
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