Do you respect your bedroom for the special space that it is? If you think about it, your bedroom is really the most important room in your home. Yes, you need a kitchen and bathroom as well. And each person who lives there needs a place to lay their head at night, even if they’re not all the same room.
But for each person, they place they sleep is truly the heart of the home. And I’m about to tell you why – as well as how you can elevate this space, so it can fulfill this function in your own life.
This is a collaboration post. However, please know I stand behind everything written here, and only include links to products/services/resources I’m willing to recommend personally.
Why Should You Respect Your Bedroom?
Everyone loves their bedroom space. Everyone knows it’s a hub of complete and total comfort and privacy, a place we enjoy spending time and closing out each day at bedtime. But unfortunately, many of us neglect redecorating or improving our bedrooms until absolutely necessary.
Just like someone at the gym who focuses only on building the most visible muscles, at the expense of developing a strong core and cardiovascular fitness, it’s easy to neglect the bedroom. After all, we tend to focus our time, energy, and home-improvement budgets on those more “public” rooms of the house. Or else those where we spend our waking hours. So the kitchen and the TV area get all our efforts and our dollars, and we ignore the space where we spend a third of our lives.
But think about it: A restful night’s sleep is the foundation for a productive day. And it’s much easier to sleep well in a space that is calm, tranquil, and truly “us” – not a space that screams chaos and disorder. So if you want to sleep better at night, you really need to respect your bedroom space and show it a little love.
These tips will show you how to rethink your bedroom space (and help your kids rethink theirs as needed), so you can all start treating it more like a restful sanctuary.
A Place of Rest
Of course, everyone knows that resting and sleeping are the two main activities you’ll be doing in your bedroom. Think about it: if you get the recommended 8 hours of sleep per night, almost one-third of your life will be spent sleeping there!
Don’t brush off the importance of this fact. The quality (and even the quantity) of your sleep is at stake. If you want to sleep better at night, you need to respect your bedroom as a place of rest:
- Invest in a decent mattress, or upgrade your mattress if your current one is getting on in years.
- Encase that mattress in allergen-blocking covers so you can breathe better.
- Ensure your room is free of unwanted light and other sleep disruptors.
- Try to keep pets out of your bedroom, so they don’t spread hair everywhere.
- Make sure that ventilation and temperature let you breathe and sleep well, regardless of outside weather.
- If at all possible, get your desk/computer/devices out of your bedroom; work and rest don’t mix well. If not, make sure that their blue light doesn’t interfere with your sleep.
Taking care of these details can improve both the quantity and quality of your sleep, which will make you happier and healthier.
A Place of Love
Your bedroom should also be a place that you love, and one where you feel love. It might be where you and your spouse rest your head. Or perhaps it’s the place where you get to escape with a good book for half an hour each evening. Maybe the wall decorations are an expression of your inner self. Or maybe it’s where you curl up with your knitting or crochet or needlepoint.
Your bedroom should be a place where you can showcase and reflect upon your innermost self, such as your favorite hobbies. Maybe you have a handmade quilt on your bed, or ready to go for a cold winter’s night. Perhaps you’re a photographer, and enlarged prints of some of your favorite shots adorn the walls. Perhaps the wall color reflects your favorite hues, ones that make you feel happy and relaxed as soon as you see them.
Think about how your bedroom can be less about clutter and more about the things you love most. There are only three decorations on the wall at the foot of our bed: a framed image containing a copy of our wedding invitation plus pressed flowers from my bouquet, and framed copies of the girls’ birth announcements. Thus the first things I see every morning when I get up, and the last things I walk past each night before bed, are reminders of the love I share with my husband and the family we’ve built together.
Creating a sense of love in your bedroom will enhance its role as the place where you and your spouse support and nourish one another. If you respect your bedroom as a sanctuary of love, your bedroom will restore you so you can face each day refreshed and at your best.
A Place to Be Fully Yourself
To be yourself fully, consider that as one of the most private spaces in your world, your bedroom may be the only place you can remove your social armor and truly be yourself. This may sound silly, but respecting the importance of your bedroom space in this role will help you further relax at bedtime and wake up more refreshed, ready to face the world again.
After all, the bedroom is also the home of some of your most prized expressions of self. It’s where your prized jewelry and accessories live. It’s home to your closet and your bedroom bureau, which house and protect your wardrobe. So you need to ensure that these expressions of self have their own special spaces, and make it back to their homes at each day’s end.
Above all else, you should respect your bedroom as the place where you return at each day’s end. Where you can collapse on the bed in your favorite pajamas, and rest in that weird pillow-hugging position you’ve found is the most comfortable. If you respect your bedroom surroundings and their role in storing and showcasing your expressions of self, they will envelop you in that sense of being fully at peace and at your truest self. In other words, you can be fully yourself.
Bedrooms are important. We all need them. But we need to respect them, improve them, and ensure they’re fulfilling their purpose. Your kitchen, living room, bathroom and even storage cupboards can be perfect. Yet if you don’t respect your bedroom for the personal sanctuary it should be, your home will never feel completely yours.
How will you spend some time and love to show your bedroom a little more respect?
If you enjoyed this post on how to respect your bedroom, why not share it with others by pinning this image?
NOTE: This site contains affiliate links. I may earn a small commission from any purchases made through affiliate links, at no additional cost to you. For more information, please read the full disclosure/privacy policy.
It’s interesting that your write about this. I’m pretty sure that I don’t. Sometimes it feels like I live in a studio with the way I treat our bedroom. Time to make changes !
I know the feeling! As much as anything, this post is a huge reminder to myself…
My bedroom is neglected for sure. It really needs a makeover, I’ll take your tips under advisement thanks!!
You’re more than welcome, Christina! 🙂
Yay! Someone who gets my bedroom fetish. I love my bedroom too and yes, for me its the most important room in the house, the place I feel most myself (as you beautifully put it).
It is SO true, yet so easy to neglect as well…I find, sadly, that I am doing this more and more as I get older, as a way of avoiding getting the clean laundry folded and in drawers…
This definitely resonated with me. I have a bit too much clutter!
don’t we all!
I’ve just moved house so have all new bedroom furniture and bed, mattress etc. However I must admit the master bedroom in my old house was last on the redecorating list! This time round, the bedrooms were priority ?
Ooh, good for you! 🙂 SO impressed. We’ve barely done a thing to our bedroom since we had the floors/walls redone a decade ago, right after we closed on the house…