What is colour drenching, and should you do it in your bedroom?

*This is a collaborative guest post

Colour drenching is when you take one colour and make everything in your bedroom that colour. It might sound dull and lazy, but colour drenching is one of the hottest interior design trends in 2024.

Critical to its appeal is the ability to make small bedrooms feel bigger with one light colour and large bedrooms feel cosier with one dark colour. 

The fantastic thing about colour drenching is that it isn’t tacky or a fad—spaces with one dominant colour are timeless, thanks to that dominant colour. Just choose a colour you adore or one that matches your home.

Should you colour-drench your bedroom? 

Colour-drenching your bedroom is one of the best ways to give it a cohesive look without tearing your hair out over interior design choices. 

We love colour drenching because it simplifies bedroom decorating, and it’s just as easy to buy furniture and upholsteries. 

Of course, not everyone likes colour drenching. Without a few personal touches, it can feel impersonal and boring. 

The trick is to add character with lighting, textures, depth, and suitable furniture choices. We provide more colour below. 

How to make colour-drenching work

1. Pick one colour

It doesn’t matter if you choose green, blue, yellow, red, or the brightest pink known to humankind – what matters is that you stick to it!

2. Bed frame

Your bed frame should be the same colour—give or take a few tones—as your walls and the rest of your bedroom furniture. 

An upholstered bed in velvet, linen, or faux leather is best for matching your bed frame to other bedroom colours. 

You can style upholstered beds with a winged headboard or get a sleigh bed with elegant scrolls at both ends for a classic look. 

Another worthwhile upgrade for your bed frame is ottoman storage. This lifts the mattress platform on gas struts, giving you space for all your bedding. 

3. Lighting 

Light. It’s all about light. Why? Because different lighting – tones, warmth, brightness – change how our eyes see colour. 

When white light (which contains all colours) hits your walls and bedroom furniture, it absorbs some wavelengths, while others reflect to our eyes. 

The colour you see comes from the wavelengths that get reflected. For instance, warm light sources (like incandescent bulbs or sunset light) emit more light in the spectrum’s red, orange, and yellow parts. 

So, when warm light hits a navy-blue object, it appears darker. However, it seems brighter and more vibrant if cool light hits it. 

This lighting trick can change the look and feel of your bedroom, even though it is decorated in the same colour. 

4. Textures

Your colour-drenched bedroom needs many different textures to create shadows and highlights and add depth to flat-coloured surfaces.

Textures also appeal to our sense of touch, even visually, making your bedroom space feel more inviting and interactive.

Highly textured elements like woven curtains and rugs could be focal points in your colour-saturated room.

Softer and silkier textures – like velvet – are perfect for your bed, while metallics are a fantastic choice for light fixtures. 

5. Depth

Depth is crucial for colour drenching because your space will look unfinished without it. The good news is it’s the easiest thing to accomplish. 

Wall cladding, a deep-padded bed headboard, chunky furniture, and plants (even plastic ones are decent) can add depth to your colour-drenched bedroom.  

Also, to return to our point about bedroom lighting, the more depth your furniture and décor have, the more effective your lighting will be. Look for opportunities to add depth to make your colour-drenching efforts pop.