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Small Space Decorating: How To Place A Bed In Front Of An Off-Set Window

There is noting more frustrating than trying to get a decent bedroom layout when it seems like the home builders paid not one bit of attention to that when building the home to where the windows are in relation to the doors and where the furniture goes. Many times I find when working with clients that they have this weirdly placed or odd sized window in their bedroom that they can’t really place a bed under and it throws off the entire flow of the room. I actually had two clients in the same month with the same design dilemma and I wanted to share with you our solution for how to place a bed in front of off-set window.

Bedroom with headboard under off set window

What is the best solution for a window that’s small and not centered in the room?

Strategic placement of window treatments is normally the best option to correct the asymmetry of an off-center window. In smaller bedrooms, floor space is a premium and that extra space is needed not only for storage, but to be able to walk around the bed comfortably especially if there are two people using the room. This is why centered bed placement is more important than ever.

Bedroom with offset windows

As you can see in the picture above, in the first client’s bedroom, the windows were placed in the corner of the room, which made for terrible furniture placement, especially one where we wanted to have the bed be the focal point of the room. In a small bedroom, it’s more important than ever to try to get the bed in a place where it’s the main focus. My client knew she wanted to do blinds for privacy so we decided to play with the size of the blind and actually stretch it out past the window so they created almost a larger window. Luckily, this window faces the street side and they never open the blinds to look outside. We then hang the curtain rod, high above the shade blind, and stretch the curtains all the way to the other side of the headboard. This allowed us to create symmetry with a curtain panel and matching nightstands each side.

Off set window solution with bed under window

we gave us entire room, a bit of a makeover to light it up, and ended up painting, a lighter wall, color, and a new headboard and the bed frame. This allowed us to bring it far down below the window frame and create a little more open feeling so the bed didn’t feel so heavy.

Do you have other furniture placement issues? Check out this post about furniture around windows and doors.

Colorful pillows on bed

We also added lots of color, and the super fun drapes and artwork from Minted, and pillows from West Elm. There are some plans to replace the rug as well in the future for something a little more neutral.

Bed with window and headboard

Adding the larger curtain panels also allowed us to balance out the other side of the room with the chest of drawers. The super cute green vintage dresser looks amazing with the arched mirror above it next to the closet doors. It really just opens up the entire room with the lighter wall color.

Painted vintage dresser painted green with lamp and arched gold mirror
Art and curtains from minted in bedroom

For clients room 2, they didn’t know what to do with the window many years ago, so they covered it with a large and dramatic headboard.While that is one way to handle it at the time , the problem for them was that they had so little light in the room it just made it darker. At the time this was totally on trend, but now we really wanted to open the window up and let it some light. Since doing major renovation and putting in a larger window wasn’t an option, we decided to fake a larger window with curtain size and placement.

How to center a bed on an off center window

We ended up doing blackout curtain panels on this window for light control and hanging the curtain rod close to the ceiling, which raises up the height of the room. We also ended up hanging the curtain rod out far enough past edge of the headboard that we could center the curtains.By tby keeping the curtains nearly closed, it still lets in light but it gives the illusion that the window is bigger than it is.

Using curtains and drapery to center an off center window over a bed

Another trick to dealing with an offset window that is larger, is filling the entire wall with draperies basically creating a wall of fabric.

Since we had the sloped ceiling in this room, that wasn’t really an option here and so we had to leave it open space on each side of the curtains. Personally, I don’t love an entire wall of fabric but if window placement is so off center in a larger room that there is no other solution it does become a good option.

I know both clients are happy with this end result and how much cozier and bright their homes feels. I hops this post helped you if you are also dealing with one of those pesky off centered windows in your bedroom!

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