Diy Headboard: Inspiration + Design

Over the last year I’ve been studying how to upholster things like ottomans, chairs and headboards. Our old rental was fully furnished and we knew we didnt want to buy another king size bed so I wanted to wait until we moved to so I could make a headboard custom to our bed. We’ve been in our new rental for almost two months. I have a few smaller projects done but now I want to try to make my first headboard. Everyones way to getting started on a project is different. Im a very visual person so the first place I always go is to my pinterest. Its the best way for me to know what I know I will like for a long time. I have different boards for different types of inspiration. Recently I went through my ‘home’ board and created sub boards that break down into different rooms.

I took a few minutes to scroll through my bedroom saves to see what ive been drawn to without the intention of creating any of those images. Its just images that ive liked the over all space and gave me the feeling I want to create in my home. My style leans into a few different styles but over all I like large furniture piece to be more modern or traditional with a cleaner look that doesnt have a lot of ornate detains. I also really like the idea of this headboard being more grand and taller then a standard headboard. Our bedroom is quite small and really can only sit our queen size bed with one standard nightstand and a plant stand on each side of the bed. Our room has a small bay window ive styled with my round table and two ottomans with floor to ceiling blackout curtains in a mocha. Opposite out bed is another window with matching curtains to the bay window.

Right now the rooms color palette consist of the warm white walls, dark brown trim, greige carpet, mocha curtains and black table. Moving into this rental I really want to play with more color then I have in the past and add more patterns around the house. This will be one of the biggest ways Im adding pattern to our house. This headboard is going to take up a large portion of the room and will be a ‘show stopper’ of sorts when you walk in. Looking through my board I seem to save a lot of slightly curved but still simple headboards and wing backs. Making a double wing back headboard with the back having a slight curve is the style I want to build. Curves are tricky to upholster and something I’ve wanted to try. With is being a slight curve at the top the fabric shouldn’t need a lot of relief cuts to lay flat.

All of the headboards i saved are solid wood or a neutral cream color. Jumping over to my color palette board I looked for any ive saved that have cream, brown and black with pops of color. A lot of the ones I saved had green or blue added. Grabbing my Benjamin Moore color deck I sat in our bedroom and picked out three blue and three green colors that looked good then came back at the end of the day when the light in the house had changed. Both Cam and I work outside of the home most days so for us we will see this headboard the most in morning light and evening.

I’m a pattern designer and so I knew whatever pattern the headboard had would be one I designed. Designing a pattern for my own home was surprisingly harder then I thought it would be. I kept jumping between geometric or floral. Pulling a few references I ended up asking Cams option to help narrow down my options. I don’t particularly like overly feminine spaces so if I did go for a floral it needed to dance the line perfectly. Designing with the scale of the headboard in mind I knew I wanted a larger pattern with more blank space to let the eye have rest. As I kept looking for different assets online and in books. I started to lean towards a floral motif with sharp edges in the leaves and pointer pieces in the flower to take away some of the feminine feeling. I love the pattern I ended up with! It comes from a historical design that I customized the layout and colors to work for this project.

I narrowed down all my original colors to just three blues and a green. When a color is printed onto a textile it will naturally change color and since im not in my manufacturers office to color test I ordered the four colors I liked to see how they printed and how they would look in the space. I put a poll on Instagram of the four options when they came out but honestly at the end of the day Cam and I chose the one we liked even though it wasnt even in the top two of what other people chose. Photos change color and its really hard to say with certainty that a color will translate how you want it from a screen. Im designing our home for us and our company to exist in with social media being an after thought. If the colors in my house dont translate the same on screen because of lighting or phone settings thats okay. My house is meant to be felt in person.