DESIGN: Create an Enchanted Forest Bedroom

• Deep, Moody Color Palette to Create a Restful Space
• Bring the Outside In with Botanical Elements
• Kill Your Overhead Light… with FIRE
• Add Seasonally Appropriate Accents
• Complete the Ambiance with Audio (and Immersive Video)

Whether you’d describe your aesthetic as spooky cottagecore, whimsigothic, dark academia, or even goblincore… you can curate a bedroom retreat that will make your witchy little heart sing. Even if you’re a renter and can’t paint the walls (and ceiling) like I did, we’ve got ideas here that will work in any space.

You can use inexpensive tapestries, prints, and mood lighting to create a magical space to relax, dream, read, and sleep the slumber of an enchanted princess (or prince, or frog…)? Use your creativity and you can shape your bedroom into the stuff dreams are made of… or at least, made in (zzzzzzzz)!

Read on for inspiration and tips about how to transform your own bland bedroom space into an enchanted forest bedroom, a magical place that is primed for deep rest. Whether you are young, young at heart, or just prone to wandering off in the wilderness in a flowing cloak, looking for fairies and gingerbread cottages hidden deep in the woods, you can live your whimsigothic design dreams!

Deep, Moody Color Palette to Create a Restful Space

Good colors for an enchanted forest bedroom are layers of deep leafy greens (think saturated forest green, leafy green, and mossy jewel tones and creamy lichen) , earthy and grounding browns (mouldering log, damp earth, stone beige, dark clay, beetle and bat brown), deep saturated or pale blues (night sky twinkling with stars through the tree canopy overhead, babbling brook blue, that corvid cousin’s iridescent blue jay wing feather found under an old oak tree, a dark spring-fed forest pool reflecting the cerulean sky above through the shadows of branches) and soft shades of grey (flint, wet karst limestone, precambrian fossil crinoids and trilobytes bits, salamander slate, meek and sleek mouse and soft dove grey).

My bedroom when I bought this house was a dreadful peachy pinkish beige (on every surface, except the trim and doors, which are still the same butterscotch color as the rest of the house trim, for now). That absolutely HAD to go.

I found a nice light sky-blue robin’s egg shade for the walls, and a deep saturated navy for the ceiling, that I added gold glitter twinkle paint powder to so I can look up at a night sky (I painted on just a few stars, just little pinpricks of yellowish white in a few sparse constellations, so it stays mystical without looking like a children’s bedroom).

And then I added the gothic Heart of the Forest mural on the wall behind my headboard, using a bunch of odds and ends of paint from other projects, and some nice artist’s paintbrushes I inherited from my college roommate (who was a visual arts major… Thanks Anna!). I googled for tutorials and medical textbook illustrations for the anatomically correct Sacred Heart.

Is it perfect? No. Do I love it? Absolutely! If you have access to a projector, you can use that to project an image you like onto the wall and sketch that, then fill it in to help with getting the result you want if your freehand drawing skills aren’t the best.

Do you rent or otherwise live where you aren’t allowed to paint the walls? Painter’s canvas is your best friend. No, not the expensive stuff from the art supply store (though if you budget will allow wall-sized canvas, go for it)… pick up a canvas dropcloth from the hardware store and paint it instead!

Hang it on a curtain wire or rods (either sew, pin in, or use iron-on seam tape to make a curtain rod pocket at the top) or even just tack it up (use the tacks or screw in hooks through the fabric, and you can hang rope or fairy lights at the top with the same fasteners).

The example on the right is in our AirBNB, and has a simple stenciled repeating floral motif (hanging from the radiator return pipes, which hides them a bit and makes a built-in curtain rod). Buy or make a stencil and lay it out however you like. You can even use regular paint- just test a little bit first to make sure it’s not going to bleed or run.

Not blessed with artistic talent? You can buy inexpensive prints on fabric of photo-realistic forest scenes, flowers, mountains, damp stony grottoes… whatever environment is your magical happy place, there’s probably a print for that.

Or you can have custom ones made with any photo or image you like, though that can be more expensive than ordering an existing design.

Hang these pre-printed forest tapestries on your walls, use them for curtains or bedspreads or make an enchanted canopy bed that is a portal to a mystical forest.

Bring the Outside In with Botanical Elements

Framed nature prints & antique or reproduction botanical plates, a collection of special stones and crystals that speak to your magpie heart, warm glowing salt lamps, fossils, and other artwork to create a connection with the natural world in your enchanted forest bedroom theme. When it comes to collecting little shiny natural treasures, I am DEFINITELY part raven, part goblin. If you are too, display your little treasures on a tray or in a shadowbox!

 

Bring in some stark bare branches (I attached a large but lightweight dead-fall ash branch to my ceiling with cup hooks and twine). You can also prop the branches up in a sturdy planter or in a corner behind furniture. Winter or fall is the best time to find these, especially after a storm (oooh, spooky season). These are ash branches, from a tree that died and was dropping limbs. Ash trees have a lot of traditional uses in magic work, as to other specific types of wood, so if you’re good at tree ID, you could pick them accordingly (or just go off of vibes, ydy). Make sure you have permission to gather the wood and don’t take living branches off a tree unless you know it’s ok!

You can also put slender smaller branches and twigs in a vase or colorful bottles, and wrap them with fairy lights to make a firefly forest night light for an end table or dresser. Use battery powered plain or fancy fairy lights (like these darling little mushroom string lights) with a remote or sleep delay (and rechargeable batteries) if you don’t have an outlet nearby.

If you use any feng shui design elements, you probably already know that plants are usually not recommended for bedrooms, so if that’s a thing you care about, stick to artistic renderings and not the real thing. Whether or not you are into that flavor of woo, if you remember high school biology you’d know that when it’s dark and plants aren’t photosynthesizing, they respire and produce CO2 much like we do, so it makes sense to keep them in the rest of your house, especially if you have a green thumb, a small bedroom, and poor ventilation (raises hand).

Plus, you want this room DARK to encourage deep restful slumber… think Sleeping Beauty, not Snow White and the Poisoned Apple (ok I guess those were both curses but give me a tower surrounded by roses rather than a glass coffin anyday, yeah?).

We layered these green velvet drapes with these heavier coal grey blackout curtains hanging behind them for a lush look and total blackout effect. These velvet drapes on their own look orange when backlit, but fabulous with the thicker grey blackout ones behind them to block the streetlight and bright morning sun… plus, they block the cold drafts from our old wooden windows that I haven’t restored yet, and keep the AC from working as hard in summer.

(Most) plants hate this one weird trick (keeping them in a dark room without sunlight).

Search thrift stores, estate sales, and eBay for prints, artwork, and frames with the timeless fairytale vibe you want, or create your own enchanted gallery wall with printables from Etsy or local artists. Frame pressed flowers in shadowbox frames, or make collage art from seed catalogs and children’s books of Grimm fairy tales. Embellish boring or dated frames with spray paint to match your color palette, or use gilt or bronze paint to antique your frames so they look timeless.

Kill Your Overhead Light… with FIRE

Overhead lights are OUT, dramatic side lighting from lamps and fairy or string lights are IN. Don’t LITERALLY kill your overhead light *especially if you’re renting and not a qualified electrician (it’s still helpful for being able to deep clean, or assemble furniture, or when you drop something small but important on the floor, I guess) but use soft side lighting whenever possible to create a flattering and soothing space. Replace cold blue light bulbs with warm-tone bulbs (LED for the planet, and because they’re safer and cheaper in the long run)… blue light interferes with sleep and also makes you look washed out and pale if you have company in there (ahem)… even if your company is just an enchanted mirror?

If you have a safe place for them (away from any curtains, bedding, children, or other flammable objects) candles can create the best flickering ambiance, casting living dancing shadows in the corners. Yes, I know they also consume oxygen when they burn and I told you to keep plants out of the bedroom for the same reason… make it make sense?

Ah well, I’m happy to perpetuate hypoxia hypocrisy here in the name of The Aesthetic Of Flame (Please Help Me My Family Is Dying).

You can always use LED candles for safety’s sake (especially if you have acrobatic pets or young children, or think you might fall asleep and leave a burning candle unattended- Dril jokes aside, you definitely don’t want to do this!).

 

 

 

 

Add Seasonally Appropriate Accents

The natural world isn’t static, and neither should be your space. You want your enchanted forest bedroom to change with the shifting wheel of the year, so rotate out some of the design elements in keeping with the seasons.

It’s easy now to do this with some inexpensive LED lights (especially ones where you can program a single bulb to shine different shades so you don’t have to store and switch them out).

Now you can change the colors of your accent mood lighting to match the season… orange or purple for Spoopy Season in the fall (Samhain), red or dark green for Yule and other winter holidays, bright white for Imbolc/Candlemas, soft springy pastels for Eostre/Ostara, green again for Beltane or other bright colors, a warm yellow glow for the Summer solstace, harvest gold for Lammas/Mabon, and back again to fall.

Or of course, you can change these up to match whatever seasonal traditions you follow, or just your mood. It’s an inexpensive way to add whimsy and mystery to your space and very renter friendly- no paint required!

Add other seasonal decor as you like- I particularly love these little Scandinavian straw Julbock, or “Yule goats” for the winter holidays (and for outsmarting any Bridge Trolls that might be hiding under the bed).

Unless you use the same sheets year round, changing out your bedding is a good way to mirror the shift in the seasons in your sleepytime sanctuary. In summer, we take the blankets off and just sleep under light blue cool and crisp sheets. In fall, the deep forest green quilted comforter comes back out, and in winter additional layers of heavy blankets and thick plaid flannel sheets go on under that. We use festive flannel reindeer sheets for the Christmas/Yule season, then back to plaid flannel again until spring arrives and it’s time for the cool blue sheets again.

 

Complete the Ambiance with Audio (and Immersive Video)

If you really want to complete the transformation of your space while you drift off to dreamland or just relax with a favorite book in your room, don’t forget the aural soundscape. Traffic noise? Yelling apartment neighbors? The sad drone of suburbia? Nope, totally killing your vibe (am I too old to say that? Whatever).

Let’s complete the magic and complete the illusion with something better to soothe our senses… Put on some soft noise-cancelling headphones or set your computer or bedroom TV on a sleep timer and queue up a playlist of haunting and ethereal ambient music. Sweet dreams, my pretties!