Create a Shabby Chic Bedroom Design
Shabby chic is a popular bedroom design style. Choosing the right bedroom design is crucial because your bedroom is typically your home's most intimate and private space. It’s where you retreat from the world, recharge, and get the rest you need at the end of the day.
Ideally, your bedroom is devoted to relaxation and sleep. This way, your body will associate it with unwinding and de-stressing, and you will start to decompress as soon as you step into your bedroom.
It might be time to redecorate your bedroom if you find it hard to relax and sleep at night. Transforming your bedroom space with a shabby chic design could be the perfect way to create a personalized, cozy retreat where you can recharge.
What Is a Shabby Chic Style Bedroom?
You can incorporate a shabby chic design into any room in your home. This design embraces aging. Instead of striving for a space that looks pristine and new, the design choices that create this aesthetic focus on older furniture and furnishings or furniture and furnishings that look worn.
Imagine you’re shopping for a new pair of jeans. You can buy a new pair that looks pristine. The colors are even, and there isn’t a stitch that is out of place. However, another pair of jeans caught your eye. This pair features uneven coloring and a few tears. They’re brand new, but they’re distressed. The first pair of jeans represent new, generic design choices in this scenario. The second pair features shabby chic elements because the jeans look older than they are and look like they’ve been used and loved.
Although shabby chic can incorporate modern elements, furniture and furnishings that appear to be vintage are an essential element. Other key characteristics include the following:
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Gentle textures: Gentle textures are items that are smooth or soft. They evoke feelings of comfort and are typically warm.
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Natural materials: Items featuring natural materials have a natural feel and look. For example, they don’t look processed and manufactured like plastic. Natural materials include natural fabrics, such as bamboo, cotton, and linen, and furniture made from wood.
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Romantic appeal: When referencing a design aesthetic, romantic appeal doesn’t refer to romance. It’s more about the romanticism of nostalgia, the sentiments people feel when they see features that evoke emotions. They may inspire people or contain idyllic features that make people think of a time or place when life was carefree and blissful.
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Signs of wear and tear: Furniture and furnishings don’t have to be old but should have an aged look. Distressed fabrics are a good example of a popular shabby chic characteristic for clothes and home decor.
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Soft colors: Shabby chic embraces soft colors, such as pastels.
A shabby chic design often evokes a cottage-country or rustic-chic feel. However, there are key differences between cottage core and rustic chic.
How Does a Shabby Chic Bedroom Differ From Cottagecore?
A shabby chic bedroom focuses on design choices, while cottagecore emphasizes a lifestyle. Shabby chic embraces rustic elements, while those opting for cottagecore prioritize a personal philosophy. Although cottagecore utilizes similar design elements, cottagecore isn’t just about design; it’s also about embracing a simpler lifestyle that moves at a more relaxed pace and making socially conscious decisions.
How Does Shabby Chic Differ From Rustic Chic?
Shabby chic often features vintage items and natural materials. Although rustic chic may also feature antiques with shabby chic characteristics, there’s a distinction between the emphasis of a shabby chic and a rustic chic bedroom.
Shabby chic can blend modern elements. It emphasizes coziness and comfort, like a well-loved sweater or blanket you like to curl up in on a winter day. Rustic chic strives to evoke feelings of being outdoors in the countryside. Although some people use rustic chic and farmhouse design interchangeably, there are some distinctions. Farmhouse designs emphasize coziness and light, while rustic chic features rugged elements.
How To Decorate a Shabby Chic Bedroom
The shabby chic style is very appealing in a bedroom because it’s rustic, feminine, and simple. It is also one of the least expensive styles to create in the bedroom because you can incorporate re-purposed or worn furniture into the design. Follow these tips to create an inviting bedroom you’ll love to spend hours in whenever you need to rest or unwind.
Choose Pale Pastels for a Shabby Chic Bedroom Aesthetic
Interior designers may suggest avoiding warm colors in the bedroom because warm colors tend to make you feel energized instead of relaxed. Cool colors are soothing, and help create the restful environment you need. Adding touches of warmth with throw blankets or throw pillows is a great way to balance cool and warm tones in a shabby chic bedroom. Pale pastels are also perfect for relaxing, shabby chic bedroom decor.
You can create a calming ambiance with colors such as dusty rose, soft coral, mint, duck egg blue, sky blue, champagne, lilac, or gray. Alternatively, go with white or cream, then add subtle touches of pattern, texture, and color throughout the room.
Create a Soft, Inviting Bed
Choosing your bedding is the simplest way to start creating a shabby chic bed design. Creating a tranquil space includes balancing patterns against plain designs. Adding too many patterns creates chaos instead of a relaxing sanctuary. Embracing soothing color choices and simple styles helps your brain to decompress and enables you to relax and feel comfortable in your bedroom.
Choose either one of these two ways to approach the room. Use neutrals on the walls, curtains, and carpet against patterned bed linens. Dainty florals like the Briteyarn Sweetbrier Print duvet cover and shams are a perfect choice. Layer the bedding using sheets in a reversed pattern or plain color to add depth to your design.
Alternatively, use plain-colored bed linens against bright accessories or bold, floral wallpaper. The Southshore Basics duvet set is an excellent choice for white, cream, gray, or sky blue linens, and you can buy matching or pastel-colored sheets, too. Don’t forget to add a soft, cozy bed throw and a few decorative pillows to finish the look. Natural and woven textures are especially important if you decide on a white or cream room. Keep window coverings light and feminine, and use a roller blind when you need to darken the room.
Use Time-Worn Furniture
Creating a shabby chic bedroom should be fun. If you’re the do-it-yourself type, visit thrift stores, salvage yards, auctions, and yard sales to find far-from-perfect furniture. The piece may already have dents and scratches, but that just adds to its charm.
It’s not hard to transform a newer piece of furniture or one in reasonable shape into an attractive shabby chic addition for your bedroom either.
Find a piece you like, and follow an online tutorial about distressed furniture painting to show you how it’s done. Add a few vintage knobs and voila. Try to stick to a single color when you paint or choose furniture, and limit the decoration to all but one piece. Shabby chic bedrooms can become busy quickly if you add too much filigree. A single color on all furniture unites the room, making it look more spacious and airy. Alternatively, you can buy shabby chic furniture in many shops or online, but you will pay more. If you’re planning on buying a new bed, consider a four-poster or antique iron. Either is an ideal addition to a shabby chic bedroom.
Add Vintage Accessories
Lighting is always important in a bedroom, but you don't need to spend a fortune when you go shabby chic. You can buy an old lamp from a thrift store, paint it, and dress the shade. Crystal chandeliers and bedside lamps work well, too. Finish your shabby chic bedroom with a vintage mirror, frosted glass makeup jars, old perfume bottles, a distressed jewelry box, or a flower vase with a few silk flowers. Don’t forget a rug, especially if you have wood floors.
Blending New Items With a Shabby Chic Aesthetic
As noted, a shabby chic bedroom can blend old and new elements to create your desired look. There are many new bedroom furnishings that complement this aesthetic that you can choose from:
Bed Skirts
Bed skirts fit the shabby chic aesthetic because they evoke feelings of nostalgia. This bedding item became popular in the early 1900s. In addition to being a design feature, bed skirts trap dust under beds and can limit your exposure to allergens. Bed skirts also conceal items stored under your bed so you don’t see clutter and feel the need to clean under your bed when it’s time to sleep.
Adding a bed skirt featuring the soft color palette shabby chic is characterized by is an excellent way to add new items that support your bedroom design.
Blankets
Blankets blend perfectly with shabby chic decor. A cotton blanket features natural materials and the gentle texture that characterizes shabby chic. Blankets added to your bed or hung over a chair evoke feelings of coziness. Adding blankets to your bedroom is a perfect way to add new items you can snuggle up with that fit perfectly with a shabby chic aesthetic.
Excellent color choices include the following:
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Cream
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Gold
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Gray
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Pink
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Off-white
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Sand
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Taupe
Soft blue shades are also a fantastic option.
Find the perfect blankets for your shabby chic bedroom.
Cotton Sheets
Cotton is a natural fiber, meaning cotton sheets feature natural materials and gentle textures that characterize shabby chic. Choosing cotton sheets with subtle patterns or soft pastel shades is a great way to add a touch of shabby chic to your bedding.
Quilts
Quilts fit the shabby chic aesthetic because they evoke feelings of nostalgia. People have used quilts for centuries. Quilts with subtle patterns and soft or cool colors are perfect for your shabby chic bedroom.
Complete Your Shabby Chic Bedroom With Goods From Southshore Fine Linens
Turning your bedroom into a shabby chic sanctuary can be a fun way to transform your space and ensure you can rest and relax. The design tips and products suggested here are the perfect starting point, and Southshore Fine Linens has the bedding you need to create the shabby chic bedroom of your dreams.
Explore Southshore Fine Linens bedding now.
Sources:
An Introduction to Quilting and Patchwork. (2024).
“Comfort Decorating” Is All About Making Your Home a Sanctuary. (2021).
Girard, J. (2025). Bed Skirts/Dust Ruffles.
The Psychology of Color and Graphic Design. (2024).
