Day at the beach

Over the past few months, we have had to shoot a lot of lifestyle footage for bedding items. And that usually entails creating all types of bedrooms.  Some are modern, some are traditional. I've built dorm rooms, little girl's room, and tween's rooms.  Urban lofts and country cottage rooms. For a recent sheet set, we were asked to showcase the blue set in a beach home. Since we were not able to travel to a true beach home, we had to recreate one. I think beach houses tend to overdo the beach theme.  Just because you are at the beach does not mean you need to hang flip flops and "Life's a beach!" signs on every wall.  There are sophisticated and subtle ways to tell a beach story.  I came up with this:

I think of this room as relaxed traditional.  The paneled headboard, french doors and mantle with fluted moldings, are the traditional architectural details. The matching night tables, lamps, and curtains are some of the details I added to keep the traditional theme.  I also used a duvet cover that matches the curtains.  If you are having custom window treatments created for your home, why not purchase extra fabric and have it made into a duvet cover. This will give your bedroom a great custom, yet traditional look.  Because I needed to use the steel blue sheets, I picked a fabric that would keep the room light.  The floral fabric was perfect since it had some of that blue in it and I could use the coral color as the accent color for the room.

To give the room a more relaxed beach feel, I added two sisal rugs that overlap. They bring the look of the sandy beach indoors.  The weathered wooden beach chairs replace more expected club or wing back chairs.  The coral colored pillows on the chairs help to balance the colors in the room.  The wooden stool acts as a small table for the chairs since a large coffee table would not fit and is nice contrast to the night tables.  The weathered wooden star-burst mirror brings the relaxed feel to the bed wall.

For the traditional mantle, I could have hung a nice piece of art, and created a nice vignette of books, candlesticks and other objects.  But to keep the casual beach feel, I simply lined up books from end to end.  I faced the spines of the books against the wall.  This kept the mantle neutral in color and would not distract from the bed.  Would I do this in a real beach house? Why not?! You are heading out to the beach to relax and you just grab a random book and go.

The best beach accessories come from nature.  I used a lidded glass urn with sand and shells and piece of driftwood on the mantle. A large clam shell on the table and a starfish and conch shell on the night tables. I also added some small potted grasses to mimic dune grasses.  These simple items turn this bedroom into a beach house bedroom.  So rethink the boardwalk accessories, and take your beach house up a notch.