Yellow bedroom ideas – 10 ways to use this cheerful color in your sleep space

Mood-lifting and warm, yellow bedroom ideas can bring energy, confidence and optimism to a space. It can be used anywhere in the home but is particularly effective in north-facing rooms that lack light. Read on to find out more about using this versatile hue for your bedroom ideas.

Yellow bedroom ideas – how to use this sunshine shade 

While the popularity of the color has been revived in recent times, the hue itself isn't new – the color yellow is one of the oldest shades in history. Take a look at our selection of yellow bedroom ideas for more inspiration.

1. Choose yellow for a north-facing room

Yellow room ideas cover a large range of shades – from barely-there buttermilk to mustard and lemon, and not forgetting ochre, gold, canary, saffron and chartreuse. 

'It can be used to add warmth to a room that feels 'cold', team it with rattan furniture and wooden floorboards, the hues will tie in perfectly to create a cozy and relaxing bedroom,' says Melanie Griffiths, editor, Period Living. 

2. Pick out key architectural details 

'In order to add interest to a room and change the pace and rhythm of your look you can use additional shades of yellow to highlight features,' says Helen Shaw, director at Benjamin Moore. 'Using one or two accents can lift the feel of a room – for instance, you can add color to pick out lines, furniture or architecture within a room. Sparing use of strong color is a super effective way of drawing the eye and creating a feature.'

3. Craft a room dipped in sunshine

‘Current trends show a real shift towards brighter colors with a clean-cut finish,’ says Sue Kim, senior color designer at Valspar. ‘When choosing colorful bedroom ideas, don’t forget to look beyond the walls – consider the ceiling, skirting, window frames and mouldings and how they can be brought into the scheme.’

This dark bedroom was transformed by interior decorator Veere Grenney with an injection of yellow, balanced by crisp white linen and rush matting.

4. Evoke a sense of calm in a traditional bedroom

'Textured wall coverings are a perfect way of introducing both color and texture to a room,' says Andrea Childs, editor, Country Homes & Interiors. 'This buttermilk shade is soothing and looks fabulous with the gold vintage frame and four-poster bed. Add in a side of rose pink with crisp white bedlinen and you have a charming yellow bedroom to relax in.'

5. Pair yellow and green for a grown-up take on nature's palette

Yellow is the perfect color to pair with contrasting and complementary shades, and it can work in both contemporary and traditional bedroom ideas. Unsurprisingly, yellow and green room ideas are amongst the sunniest of spaces – perfect for warming up cool, north- or east-facing bedrooms.

Looking for yellow living room ideas that aren't too yellow? You can create an inviting yellow and green bedroom with flowers, earthy natural textures, and pleasing patterns in this season’s most warming of color palettes, without the yellow being overpowering.

6. Pull out a color from your wallpaper to use elsewhere

'The client gravitates towards playful patterns and fun colors, and wanted a space that is anything but cookie-cutter,' says Jessica Nelson, Allied ASID principal designer at Etch Design Group. 'The wallpaper was an immediate winner, as it checked all of the boxes, and provided a wide assortment of colors to work with in the space. We pulled the yellow from the wallpaper into the room through the custom velvet headboard, and it just happened to match the client's existing antique chair.'

7. Decorate with yellow in a nursery 

'This nursery I designed was for my client’s grandchildren,' says Kim Armstrong, owner and principal designer at Kim Armstrong Interior Design. 'My clients had two new grand babies, and others on the way, so they wanted to create a gender neutral nursery room for all of their youngest guests.'

'I selected this yellow wallpaper from Thibaut as the jumping off point for the whole design. Yellow is such a cheerful color, and it is a color that works well in any nursery. Some colors are timeless, and I think yellow is one of those colors.'

8. Use a primary yellow wallpaper as the focal point

Decorating with primary colors in interior design can be done subtly and elegantly to create bright – but understated – colorful bedroom ideas. Adding bold brights can be done in a way that's sophisticated and subtle, if the primaries are added in pops rather than swathes.

'We believe in using one primary color as the 'star' as I like to say it and we would recommend using the other primary colors as a supporting player,' says Mark Lavender, Principal Designer at M.Lavender Interiors. 

'In this bedroom, we used yellow as the main 'star' and the blue and red as supporting players as the headboard and colors in pillows. This creates a nice balance in the room.'

9. Use a variety of colors from the same palette

'We love to use earthy colors such as greens, dusky blues, ochres, chocolates, and cream design schemes,' says Camilla Clarke, creative director at Albion Nord. 'I tend to avoid anything grey and look to use architectural creams, or earthy greens. I have recently been drawn to yellows and pinks as they give off such an upbeat feeling.'

Emma Deterding, founder, Kelling Designs agrees: ‘Yellow is a great accent color for those that are less bold – use it as piping, fringing on cushions and through your pictures. It always looks great with beige, browns and greys, giving them a real pop. Put a yellow into a stack of anything from chairs to cushions and it will give it all a lift. A pop of yellow will always cheer up any scheme.’ 

10. Create an eye-catching statement with a yellow canopy

If you love green room ideas but feel they need a little more heat, or want to take the brightness of yellow room ideas down a notch, then a yellow and green bedroom is the perfect compromise.

'I love green and yellow as a color combination,' says Henriette von Stockhausen, Creative Director at VSP Interiors. 'In my opinion, sometimes less is enough, so all the elements are allowed to shine rather than compete.'

Is yellow a good color for the bedroom?

Yellow is a great color for the bedroom: warm, exuberant and space-enhancing all in one go, it is hard to go wrong with this cheerful color.

‘To use yellow or ochre, you need to think of it as the “neutral” in the scheme; as a foil to set off other colors, not to overpower everything else,' says Susan Deliss, textile designer and interior decorator. 'Avoid anything that says canary or banana and go for something that sets off the architecture or warms up a cooler space.’