Jennifer Sheahan: Choose the perfect headboard for your bedroom

The Home of the Year winner shares her top picks

Sheets by Foxford, Delia bed by Made.com in Jennifer's bedroom. Picture: Moya Nolan

I love my headboard. It's a deep, bluey-green velour headboard with a scalloped edge and it matches my bed base perfectly. But (there’s always a but isn’t there) I would change it if I were redesigning my bedroom. I would keep the same style and material, but I have recently been coveting a wide headboard that extends beyond the edges of the bed and slightly wraps around in a deeply luxurious design. 

I think part of the reason I love those wider headboards is they tend to have built-in bedside lockers or shelves, and I don’t know about you, but I personally found the search for bedside lockers a long and tedious one. While I ultimately found the perfect ones (in April and the Bear in Rathmines, unfortunately no longer stocked), the trauma remains. My room is also just a bit too small to accommodate such a structure, yet this low-level persistent longing for a new headboard remains and has got me thinking about why we have headboards at all. Where did they come from and what is their function? I discovered a whole world of different styles from the dramatic four-poster bed to making an impact with no headboard at all.

FOUR-POSTERS 

I personally find four-poster beds to be the ultimate in luxury and sophistication. Whenever I stay at a hotel with a four-poster bed I really feel like I’ve made it. Indeed their very existence was intended as a display of wealth by the richest in European society, back in the days where palaces and estate homes were filled with people of leisure lounging around together yet wanting to maintain some semblance of privacy. The four-poster bed doesn’t serve any purpose, unless for some reason you need to enclose your bed and intend to hang curtains or a canopy around it. It’s purely for aesthetic appeal, and so the sole reason for choosing it would be to bring a dramatic element of luxury into your bedroom. 

These days four-poster beds come in pretty much every style imaginable from sleek, minimalist metal frames to ornate wooden structures. There are also beds that come just with the four posts in each corner but without the overhead canopies, sometimes called pencil post beds. The style you choose should be complementary to the overall aesthetic of your home; it’s easy to go overboard as a four-poster bed is already quite dramatic, so my advice is to hold back and add an extra flourish later if needed via some draped voiles.

Kate O'Driscoll's bed styling. Picture: Kate O'Driscoll @victorianrathmines

MIDDLE GROUND

For the rest of us, not living in palatial luxury, there are approximately seventy billion different types of regular headboards to choose from. Remembering that headboards serve no purpose other than aesthetic will help narrow down your choice, with one major exception of course, storage. If you’re low on space in your bedroom, choosing a headboard that has built-in storage is a super idea. 

There are lots of headboards available that are narrow enough to fit neatly behind your bed without taking up much floor space, but which have shelves to accommodate books, magazines, charging cables and any other bedside paraphernalia you may have. 

This is a great option if you don’t have room for bedside lockers. Otherwise, your choice of headboards purely comes down to style; upholstered headboards are a great way to bring in some additional colour and softness; wooden headboards are timeless and durable and come in all styles from ornate to minimalist; rattan headboards are a stylish choice for additional texture and even colour. As I said, I love headboards that extend wider than the bed and curve around slightly; they provide a cosy, cocooned feeling. I also love headboards that extend high up the wall. These provide elegance and a strong focal point without taking up any additional space. The size of your headboard should be proportional to the size of your room.

NO HEADBOARD

As much as headboards provide no practical purpose, I still feel weird when I see a bed without one. Do I think I’m somehow going to fall off the bed head first and get stuck between the wall and the mattress? I don’t know, but having nothing there feels strange to me. Minimalism is not my style though, so if it’s yours then I wish you many blissful headboardless sleeps. 

As far as my own preference goes, there are some notable exceptions where I feel no headboard looks great. First up is a wall hanging, if you wish to hang a dramatic piece of art (be it a painting or a tapestry) above your bed then having no headboard to compete with it could be a better look. Secondly, I adore a painted headboard, a large semicircle or a bold section of wallpaper can look fantastic in place of a traditional headboard. 

Finally, I was reminded last weekend that my childhood bed had no headboard. Instead, my creative (however misguided) younger self chose to install a curtain rail on the wall above my bed and to hang a mixture of flat cushions, burgundy voile, and fairy lights from it. It’s a… unique look, one I’m unlikely to replicate, but it was fun to experiment.

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