Bedrooms built around how you sleep, dress and work

One drawing for the bed, the wardrobe and the desk

A master bedroom carries the most: a wardrobe for two people, a dresser, often a TV wall and sometimes a desk. A guest room needs less storage and is usually the room that doubles as a study. A kids’ room needs a desk, shelves for books and toys and a wardrobe that still works as the child grows. We start with who sleeps in the room and what has to live in it, then draw the whole room in 3D with the bed at real size, so you can see how much floor is left once the wardrobe is in and whether the shutters open past the bed.

The headboard wall sets the room

In most of these bedrooms one wall does the work. In one Sobha Royal Pavilion bedroom it is a navy quilted velvet panel flanked by grey-blue panels, gold mirror strips and spiral gold pendants. In the next room it is a backlit arch in leaf-pattern wallpaper framed by white fluted panels. At Prestige Shantiniketan, fluted panels painted in a diagonal lavender and white split with two cone pendants over floating shelves. In the Jigani villa, a plain white wall with a tufted leather headboard and a single pendant.

Keep the walls and the wardrobe in soft neutrals and the colour comes from that one wall, the bed and the curtains. The wiring for the pendants and the backlight goes in before the panels, so this is decided on the drawing, not on site.

Wardrobes, lofts and the dresser

Storage is what keeps a bedroom tidy, so it is the first thing we size. Hinged shutters where there is room for doors to swing, sliding shutters where there is not. A loft above the wardrobe for suitcases and winter things. Shutters in laminate, mirrored glass, tinted glass or cane, depending on how much light the room needs to bounce around; the mirrored French-pane wardrobe in the gallery makes the room look larger.

Beside the wardrobe, a dresser with a backlit mirror, either backlit and set into a fluted wood panel or brass-framed with a picture light above it. Bedside units can be drawer units or a simple floating shelf. Inside the wardrobe, the split between hanging, shelves and drawers is drawn to what you own. There is a separate page on wardrobes if that is the main job.

A desk by the window when the bedroom is also an office

Besides the kids’ room, two bedrooms on this page have a desk built in. At Prestige Ferns City, a walnut desk with drawers and open shelves sits by the window with the white grooved wardrobe running alongside it. In the sage-green room, a white desk with a backlit shelf sits beside a cane-fronted window seat with storage drawers below. The desk goes by the window for daylight, with its power points marked on the drawing, and the chair’s swing is kept clear of the wardrobe doors.

Kids’ rooms that can take a theme

The kids’ room at Sobha Royal Pavilion has a peach bunny-ear headboard inside a backlit fluted arch, cloud-shaped ceiling panels, a fluted study desk with a glass top and backlit shelves for the dolls, a white wardrobe with peach arched panels and a book rack by the door. At Prestige Ferns City the brief was simpler: a single bed with a storage drawer, a padded headboard panel, dotted wallpaper and a chalkboard band on the wall. Both have a proper desk, because homework arrives sooner than you think.

Ceiling and lighting in layers

A false ceiling with a cove around the edge gives the room its evening light without a bulb glaring in the middle. On top of that, pendants either side of the bed instead of table lamps, so the bedside stays clear; a backlight behind the headboard panel or in the dresser mirror; and the fan and AC placed so neither cuts across the ceiling design. The reading lights can have their own switch at the bed and the cove a dimmer, so the same room works early in the morning and late at night.

How a bedroom project runs

You brief us, we measure, and you see the room in 3D before anything is ordered. Once you sign off, the false ceiling and the wiring go in first, then the wardrobe, panels and desk are installed, with a site supervisor overseeing the work. For a whole home, the usual timeline is 45 to 60 working days; a single bedroom gets its own date at sign-off.