DECOR

Styling Series

STYLING OUR NIGHTSTANDS

Styling and dreaming up vignettes has to be one of the most fun parts of personalizing your home. I love keeping things neutral with our larger scale furnishings so we can easily transition between seasons and decorating style with smaller styling items. It’s so much easier to bring a trendy colour in through an accessory like a book, a pillow or a dried floral arrangement that can easily be swapped out.

At times I love more feminine pieces and colours like dusty rose (millennial pink) so I bring those hues in through accessories like dried floral arrangements and accessories that I can tuck away and replace with something else when I or my husband get sick of them.

I’ll walk you through how I’ve done this when styling our nightstands (I’m no expert, but just someone who has always loved interior design).

SELECTING FURNITURE

When selecting furniture for our bedroom it was really important to me that it was in keeping with the rest of our home. I wanted to pull in as many colours and textures from the other rooms in our home as possible to create flow.

I leaned really heavily into natural, white washed wood textures, with neutral creamy fabrics throughout our living and dining rooms and wanted to make sure I found pieces that mirrored that aesthetic in our bedroom.

It took a lot of searching but I finally found the perfect pieces at the right price point. For those of you that watch my instagram stories, you will already know this but I stumbled upon Restoration Hardware Baby and Child and was pleasantly surprised that the furnishings were stunning and a lot lighter than most of their other collections. In addition the price point was a lot lower. Bonus!

Depending on your budget you could say these nightstands were a splurge but in comparison to what we were looking at elsewhere they were a major save for us. Some of the nightstands we loved ran as high as $3500.00 each and we just couldn’t justify spending that right now, even though it was very tempting.

We were able to purchase our nightstands at the member price as my parents have been longtime members and we even found one at the outlet store that was undamaged which saved us even more. It was only $470.00 and the regular price (Non-member) is just over $900.00 (*tip, always shop around for deals, the internet is your friend when looking for alternative pricing on the same items)

LAMPS

There are so many stunning lighting options for bedrooms these days and the lighting option you choose really effects how you will be able to style your nightstands. Personally, I am a sucker for sconces but it wasn’t in our budget to have them wired into our walls and I really didn’t want to have a cord running down our wall so we decided to go for lamps.

If we had to go with lamps I wanted something functional but that also acted as a sculptural art piece. I had long admired the Regina Andrew plaster lamps which we ended up going with for just that reason. I loved the scale and texture of them and I love that when you flip the light on the shade turns a beautiful shade of taupe. We also have brass hardware all over our home so I loved the little brass details on the lamp which help to tie our bedroom in with the rest of our home.

These lamps were definitely a splurge, however I managed to get my hands on some floor models which again saved us some money. Had they been full-price I may have needed to keep looking. (*tip always ask if there’s a floor model available and if the store is willing to sell them to you. In most instances, you get the product faster and you can get deals on them if there are any imperfections)

ACCESSORIES

What I look for when picking accessories:

Similar or complimentary Tones/Colours

This is where I decided to amp up the colour. I wanted to introduce colour through accessories like books, flowers and picture frames that I could change up frequently.

I felt the room was craving some darker elements so I decided to pull in some warm and darker toned objects. I scavenged our house for anything I could find that had some gold, rusty fall tones in it. I ended up finding some dusty pink dried flowers, some coppery brown antique books, a brown gem stone and a gold picture frame.

Varying heights

The lamp already added a lot of height so I stacked the books on their side, one with it’s spine to the front and the others worn pages to the front to add more texture and layered a light vase with dried flowers ontop. I placed the frame in front. It’s clear so it doesn’t clutter the space too much (although I have my eye on a slightly smaller and more square version of this frame that I think will work better, it’s just out of stock right now) and then finally a small gem stone.

SHOPPING FOR FOREVER

Finding pieces you are going to love forever isn’t easy. We don’t know if our taste will change drastically, however I try to do this by picking pieces that are high quality so their re-sale value will still remain high or that they have the potential to be moved to another room if we decide we want a re-fresh in a few years. White washed wood is a pretty timeless look but it can also transition into a baby’s room, a child’s room or a guest room really easily because it’s so neutral.

A NIGHTSTAND FOR NICK

When it came to styling Nick’s nightstand I wanted it to be a reflection of who he is, not who I am (okay maybe a lit bit of me infused in there). I wanted it to be styled in a way that would compliment my nightstand but without the frills. Lucky for me Nick has a really great sense for design and has always collected beautiful items. He and I both have an eye for vintage and antique items so I knew we could find a commonality in that.

Nick’s sense of design was one of the qualities that attracted me to him in the first place. I still remember walking into his old bedroom when we first started seeing one another and he had this stunning magnifying glass with a horn handle, I knew then, we were a good fit. Sadly it was lost when he moved but I still think of it to this day.

I went down to our storage room where we keep all of our books and collected any books that were antique and had neutral spines. I bought him a little succulent to add a little pop of colour and life to his nightstand that didn’t feel as frilly as the dried florals on mine. I also collected a vintage camera we bought on our honeymoon at portobello market. It’s one of his prized possessions and I thought it was a perfect place to display it. I even kept the tag on it with the price because I thought it added some character to the piece.

To shop this post and more rooms in our home, check out the shop our home page here.

DON’T be afraid TO CHANGE IT UP FROM TIME TO TIME.

I like to keep things fresh so try swapping in new arrangements, books…etc. Here’s a re-design I am loving. My mom snipped these hydrangeas for me from her garden in the fall and I popped them into one of my favourite pitchers.