Art deco bedroom ideas with a patterned four-poster

Art deco loved a repeating shape. Sunbursts, stepped outlines, fans, arches and chevrons, set out in perfect symmetry and finished in black, gold and glossy lacquer. Stand in the doorway of a deco bedroom and the first thing you notice is the order of it: everything balanced around the bed, everything echoing everything else.

A patterned four-poster headboard is a repeating shape set in steel, which makes it an unusually good centre for a deco room. Here's how to build one around it, walking in from the door.

From the doorway: symmetry

Deco rooms are arranged around a centre line, and in a bedroom that line runs straight through the middle of the bed. Place it centrally on the main wall if you can, then mirror everything either side: matching bedside tables, matching lamps, matching pictures or mirrors above them. A four-poster helps, because its posts already frame the bed symmetrically.

If the room won't allow a central bed, create symmetry on the bed wall alone. The eye forgives an off-centre room if the composition around the bed is balanced.

The centrepiece: the headboard

Three of our headboards suit deco especially well, each in a different mood.

Arcadia is a grid of diamond shapes with precise spacing. It's crisp and architectural, and it reads strongly in a dark finish against a pale wall.

Pavilion is cut with soft, repeating arcs in mirrored symmetry, like a row of arches. It brings a calmer, curved deco to the room, closer to the gentler end of the style.

Solstice carries interlocking circles in a continuous band. It's the softest outline in our range, and its circles sit well with the round mirrors and curved furniture deco favoured.

The colour: black and gold, or something bolder

Gilt, our gold finish, is the most deco of our five, and it's the boldest choice: a gold four-poster against a deep wall reads like a piece of jewellery set in a room. Obsidian, our black, gives you the other half of the classic black-and-gold pairing, and lets gold appear in smaller doses elsewhere: lamp bases, picture frames, mirror surrounds.

For walls, deco favoured deep, rich colour. Emerald, navy, black, deep teal and a dusty blush all suit a gold or black frame. Our guide to choosing a colour for restraint furniture covers how each finish behaves against different walls, and our guide to RAL colours explains how to order a shade outside our five.

The surfaces: gloss, velvet and glass

Deco rooms mix shine with softness. Look for lacquered or high-gloss bedside tables, mirrored or glass surfaces, and polished metal, then balance them with velvet: a velvet headboard cushion, a velvet throw, a velvet chair. Bedding stays simple and crisp, in white or a single deep colour, so the headboard's pattern stays the main event.

A fan-shaped or stepped mirror, a geometric rug and a pair of globe or tiered lamps will do more for the style than any amount of smaller decoration.

The light: warm and symmetrical

Matching lamps either side of the bed are almost essential. Choose warm bulbs, and position the lamps so they light the headboard from both sides: Pavilion's arches and Solstice's circles throw soft, repeating shadows on the wall behind them, and Arcadia's diamonds throw a crisp grid. A dimmable overhead light, ideally a geometric pendant or a flush ceiling light, completes it.

Keeping it liveable

Deco's formality is part of its appeal, but a bedroom still has to be slept in. Keep the gloss and gold to surfaces you won't touch every morning, and choose bedding you can wash without ceremony. A deco room also hides a restraint bed well: in a room full of pattern, gold and symmetry, a patterned four-poster looks entirely at home. Our guide to living with a restraint bed every day covers the rest.

You can see all three headboards among our BDSM bed frames, each made to order in S235 steel. For the full effect, start with Arcadia in Obsidian against a pale wall, or Pavilion in Gilt against deep emerald.