'If Everything Screams at You, Nothing Works' – Ferris Rafauli, Celebrity Interior Designer, Centers Performance and Understated Glamour in the Bedroom

Designing a bedroom goes beyond aesthetics; ultimately, it is a purpose-driven space that needs to facilitate sleep. So, how do you build a bedroom that works as well as it looks? Ferris Rafauli, the Ontario-based interior designer who has designed stunning homes for Wayne and Janet Gretzky, Drake, and Mark Zuckerberg, has a few ideas.

As part of his continued collaboration with the Swedish Family-run mattress company, Hästens (famed for their $1 million mattress), Ferris sat down with Homes & Gardens to discuss how to design a bedroom that prioritizes performance. Alongside the launch of the newly refined Grand Vividus and drēmər® 'sleep instruments' (Hästens' word for mattresses), we discussed how these products support restoration and performance, the evolution of Ferris's partnership with them, and how the best bedrooms are about taking away, not adding.

What became increasingly clear as our conversation went on is that performance is the next evolution of the luxury home.

In our exclusive interview, Ferris told me: 'In today's age, things move so quickly that people invest in everything that they can touch and feel and see, and forget that the essence of what performance is, is how you perform. What supports your performance is not only your mental training and discipline, but also how well your mind and body are rested, so one of the most important instruments to me has always been how well you sleep. If you sleep well, typically you think more clearly, you perform better, and you deliver on your more ambitious goals because you're in a confident spirit.' Of course, choosing the best mattress is just the start.

'Ultimately, everything that surrounds you inspires you or motivates you or demotivates you, from the friends that you keep to the environments that you live in,' he explains. 'People create beautiful spaces or drive nice cars because they feel a certain way, and that feeling becomes motivation.'

This pursuit of greatness has made Ferris's designs for Hästens a natural choice for athletes and performing at the highest level, like Wayne Gretzky, who also took part in the campaign. Ferris explains this alignment, stating: 'People like Wayne and Janet Gretzky have lived in a world where performance, recovery, and consistency define everything. They understand instinctively that what happens off the ice is just as critical as what happens on it.' Choosing the best mattress for you becomes an investment in your long-term health and performance.

Ferris continues: 'When the standard for sleep is truly uncompromising, Hästens isn’t a discovery, it’s a natural alignment. It reflects the same discipline, craftsmanship, and respect for performance they’ve applied their entire lives. But even beyond the name, the environment, the story, the focus always returns to the bed.Because that’s where the outcome is decided. How the body recovers, how the mind resets, and how you wake and move the next day. At the highest level, everything can be exceptional. But only one element actually transforms you. That’s why the attention always comes back to the bed.'

According to Ferris, creating a relaxing atmosphere is the most important consideration when designing a bedroom.

He explains: ‘In high-traffic spaces, you might want artwork on the walls or a busier design. As you move through different areas, you want distinct experiences. The bedroom, however, is a place to unwind and simplify.’

He continues: ‘Although you want it to be beautiful and impressive, the true focus is on sleep, on unwinding, relaxing, resting, and recharging for the next day. My role in this campaign was to celebrate the art of sleep aesthetically and bring the focus back to the bed. I prefer to remove some of the elements that, in my opinion, people often overdesign in bedrooms. It is a space meant for relaxation, not intensity.’

He adds: ‘People need to understand when to subtract and when to add, that balance is a defining moment in any space. If everything demands attention, nothing stands out.’

He concludes: ‘This is a place where you can scale things back slightly and let key pieces, the bed, nightstands, headboard, and linens, invite you in. You can still celebrate design while allowing other elements to remain quieter. This puts the spotlight where it belongs, on sleep and restoration.’

Ferris's own bedroom ideas are based on the client's requirements. Again, the performance and functionality inform the design rather than the other way around. He states: 'Every client is different. If it's a single person, if it's a married couple, younger, older, everything, everything in between, that's always a factor because you want to support how they live around, their taste and style. But what is true across almost every age group and person is that we all go to sleep. We all have to sleep.'

'So at some point, there has to be a neutrality point from design shifting to relaxation,' he continues. 'So a bedroom suite may have great amenities. You might have a bar, you might have different elements that make it exciting. But I do, intentionally, from color tone to personality and to finishes, pare back some of the detailing so when you walk into the space, it feels like you're in a bedroom. You don't want to feel like you walked into your living room or your lounge.'

Creating a unique feel is equally important in building a relaxing bedroom. Ferris says: 'Not only is it driven by the client, but it's also driven by what we call our discipline, which is like having hit points, neutral points, soft points, strong points, more casual, more formal. In this case, it would be more relaxed and more encouraging to unwind in some cases.' To this point, he explains that bedroom lighting is a huge consideration to support this unwinding process.

Though many people would use the phrase 'quiet luxury' to describe Ferris's pared-back approach to bedroom design or these high-end mattresses, he rejects that label.

Ferris tells me: 'The word luxury is often used to express what I do. I don't ever use the word luxury. I find the word luxury is a sales word, right? You're trying to convince me. In actuality, you know, I'll decide. The consumer decides what luxury really is. Price points, status, you know, aesthetics, everyone has different ways of looking at that. But truthfully, luxury begins with health. The word luxury is used to describe my work because it's maybe glamorous and some of it's large scale, and there are things that are super exciting to look at, but it's born from a use case and substance, and ultimately you can't buy that, and you can't experience that unless you have substance.'

Shop The Luxury Sleep Edit

In addition to a performance-prioritizing mattress, choosing the best bedding is a further investment in your sleep. Here are Homes & Gardens' favorite options, as picked by our editors.

As we enter the latter half of the 2020s, performance and wellness will become increasing considerations of how we design our homes. In the bedroom, these factors are even more important.