Styling Bedside Tables

Styling Bedside Tables

Every house has its hotspots for clutter and mess. The kitchen table, the dresser, the table in the hallway, the concealed spot between the armchair and the wall – and, of course, the bedside table.

It’s a common habit that most of us resent having – that relentless tendency to add ‘just one more’ thing to the pile. Whether we’re in a rush to get out the door, in ‘wind down’ mode at the tail-end of the day, or just not feeling like embarking on a tidy-up spree, it’s all too easy for these surfaces to start to look overrun, rather than neatly and beautifully arranged.

And we should allow ourselves those spots in the house that tend to accumulate – even if we sign ourselves onto the put-away strategy, or some other ‘keep tidy’ endeavour.

But the bedside tables are worth a little more strategic planning. Not only are they very prominent, given the fact that the head of the bed tends to represent the main focal point in the room, but they also serve a very particular purpose – one that shouldn’t be disrupted by excess clutter, particularly late at night or early on a weekday morning.

So, how do you style the bedside table?

Start with your lighting

Everything else on the bedside table could be argued away as extraneous. If there’s one thing that we all want to have at our side during reading sessions that go long into the night, very early starts, middle of the night wake-up calls from the little ones, or particularly late bedtimes, it’s a bedside lamp.

Lamps are an incredibly versatile form of lighting – much more so than other lighting options. While enough lamps can fully light a room, they can also create just a dim, comfortable glow – ideal for the bedroom.

Lamps can also be very decorative, and some of the most beautiful lighting options you could need for the bedside table. Don’t hold back – let your lighting take up the lion’s share of space at your bedside.

Add something beautiful and practical

We’ve all heard William Morris’s rule for decorating – that you should have nothing in your home that you do not deem either beautiful or useful. When it comes to the bedside table, however, we’d like to take that one step further, and say everything that makes its way onto it should be both beautiful and practical.

It’s easier than it might sound. A small trinket dish for your rings, an elegant dispenser for hand cream or tissues, a glass carafe for water, a candle – anything that accomplishes the two most important jobs: purpose and beauty.

Aim to choose something that differs in height and size from your lamp, without being totally lost. Variation is key.

Organise the Practical but Un-beautiful Items Out of Sight

It’s all very well and good saying ‘limit yourself to one beautiful and useful item’, but what about everything else?

If your drawer or cupboard isn’t organised, this new approach to styling the beside tables won’t stick. A great alternative is to place an organiser underneath your bedside table (if you can), and to conceal it behind a curtain (or use the curtain to replace a cupboard door that never keeps itself closed).

Take time choosing a curtain fabric that complements the rest of the bedroom’s décor. You might choose to echo the design of your curtains or bedding, but remember that matching is not always the best way to decorate a space. Contrast looks a lot more creative and unique.

Leave space

This is one of the trickiest things you can do. Unlike other surfaces, like side tables and dressers, you want to place as much emphasis on the empty space as you do on the décor itself.

The bedside table generally sees a regular rotation of books – the phone, tablet, or e-reader – or your diary, and you don’t want to end every day trying to make just enough room between everything else that calls your bedside table home.

Empty space goes against our instincts, especially when we’re concentrating our styling efforts toward a particular space or piece of furniture, but the bedside table needs it just as much as the breakfast table or the coffee table.

Space can be beautiful, even if you consider yourself closer to maximalism than minimalism – and it is undeniably useful.

Let them be sisters, not twins

There’s a longstanding belief – one that spans many different styles of interior design – that the beside tables on either side of a bed need to match. Matching furniture, matching lamps and lampshades – the whole works.

While it is a great way to create a sense of order and intentionality, there’s always something to be said for the beauty of non-matching pieces. More and more these days, people are embracing contrast and moving away from matching sets, and the bedside tables are no exception.

If you can’t bring yourself to eschew the matching pair of bedside tables, then push yourself a little outside of your comfort zone by choosing contrasting lamps, letting your personalities shine through the pieces you choose.