What’s your favourite shade of blue: azure, blue-gray, blue-green, cerulean, cobalt, indigo, navy, royal, sapphire, teal, turquoise, ultramarine?

Another favourite among my Twitter followers was greige. What is greige, some of you may be asking? Well, until recently I hadn’t heard of it either, so I looked it up: “greige is an unbleached and un-dyed cloth or yarn” but also “a colour blending gray and beige”. That’s when I went: aha, my living room is painted greige! I called it taupe at the time, but people kept looking at it and calling it either dark beige or gray. Now I can tell them it’s greige!

Most people will argue that a hotel is just a place to sleep over whilst you are away from home, however, I strongly believe that whenever possible we should do it in style. There are fabulous hotels out there which can provide us with great inspiration and ideas for our homes especially for the bedroom. I would like to share with you at least one design or boutique hotel, as we call it in Europe, every week.

I've asked my Twitter followers which colours they preferred in their bedrooms and gray, along with white, came up as the top choices.
Gray is a beautiful neutral colour which works well with just about any colour combo you can think of. For this post I kept my selection between colour defining boundaries – white to black. I love the soft and rich textures mixed together to create these fabulous and soothing bedrooms.

Here is a bit of trivia for the guys out there now screaming ”Not in my bedroom!!”:

”In Western culture, the practice of assigning pink to an individual gender began in the 1920s. From then until the 1940s, pink was considered appropriate for boys because being related to red it was the more masculine and decided color, while blue was considered appropriate for girls because it was the more delicate and dainty color, or related to the Virgin Mary. Since the 1940s, the societal norm was inverted; pink became considered appropriate for girls and blue appropriate for boys, a practice that has continued into the 21st century. “ (Wikipedia).

Aren’t these the most fabulous and luxurious bedrooms ever? The texture and styling are just stunning. They all have one thing in common, they are minimal but do not look unfinished. They all make me wish for a rainy day so that I can snuggle up in bed with a good book – guilt free. :)

Stephanie a.k.a. Mrs Limestone, blogs about her adventures mainly in renovating her Brooklyn limestone home, on one of my favourite reads: a Brooklyn limestone in progress.  I am sure that her funny and candid writing style coupled with her impeccable taste for interiors had something to do with being referred by the British Times as one of the 50 world's best design blogs.

I have spent some time over the Christmas holidays re-organizing my image gallery and in doing so I realized that I have developed an unconscious obsession with four poster beds. There is something regal and visually striking about four poster beds so I ended up collecting dozens and dozens of four poster bedroom images.

I wanted to start the year with a serene colour trend, all white interiors. I mentioned in previous posts (here and here) that white is a timeless classic, one that embodies tranquillity and feels restful, so what better place for white than the bedroom?

This is one of the most dramatic makeovers I have seen to date, the end result looks straight out of a design hotel. Michelle from Three Men and a Lady is the lady behind such a fabulous makeover. Check out the rest of her home for a full showcase of Michelle’s resourceful interior decorating ideas.