Choosing a color the room can live with

Start with the light, not the swatch

A color behaves differently depending on which way the window faces. A room that gets morning light will cool almost anything you put in it, and a room that only sees late sun will warm it. That is why a color that looked right on a screen can look wrong once it is on the bed, and it has nothing to do with the dye.

We group our tones four ways for that reason. The names are ours rather than an industry standard, and each one describes what the color does to a room.

• Cool and calm. blue, green, grey, purple. 40 sets.
• Soft and pale. cream, white, pink. 10 sets.
• Warm and earthy. red, rust, brown. 11 sets.
• Dark and graphic. black. 5 sets.

Pattern is a question of distance

Scale matters more than motif. A large print reads as one shape from the door and as detail from the pillow, while a small repeat does the opposite and turns into texture the moment you step back. In a small room a large print eats the floor space visually. In a large room a small repeat disappears.

If the walls already carry a pattern, the bed is the place to stop. One patterned surface per room is usually enough, and the bed is the one people see first.

The practical part

• Dark covers hide a lot and show every thread of lint. Pale covers do the reverse.
• A reversible top is two rooms from one order. 13 sets carry a second face, so the bed can change without anything else being bought.
• Photographs are lit for photographs. The color pages group the sets by family so you can compare them against each other instead of against a studio.