8 Playful Headboards

A great vision for a bedroom often wraps around the headboard, usually the largest piece of furniture in the room and one with a key role to anchor the bed. Charming silhouettes and bold punches of color and pattern make these headboards worthy of their prime position in a children’s room, guest room or master suite.

Susan Jamieson’s geometric headboard for a boy’s room in a Southeastern Designer Showhouse in Atlanta is a bold demonstration of dimension, depth and design. For another fun touch, she used custom paint colors by her firm — Bridget Beari Designs, which she named for beloved pet dogs and from which she donates proceeds to animal rescue groups.

Designer Sandra Espinet arranged light gray and black river rocks and pebbles in a mosaic-like fashion to create wall-mounted headboards in a rustic guest bedroom.

“Beds have become taller and more important than in past years. Some modern headboards are dramatic and go all the way to the ceiling,” she says. “And creating these unique headboards gives a bedroom a bit of wow factor.”

The headboards evoked the feeling of the beach, appropriate for the room, which faced the Pacific Ocean, Espinet says.

“The pebbles are fun to use and much more fun than a standard upholstered bed,” she says. “I like using variation in materials and textures.”

Upholstered headboards are also taking on more interesting shapes, such as more curves and arches, says John Loecke, who with Jason Oliver Nixon owns interior design firm Madcap Cottage and published the 2017 book, “Prints Charming by Madcap Cottage: Create Absolutely Beautiful Interiors with Prints & Patterns.”

“Where headboards pretty much used to be a solid, you’re seeing people start embracing using a pattern on a headboard,” he says.

Madcap Cottage stretched the headboard to the ceiling with a canopy in a blue-and-green master bedroom filled with floral accents.

“Trim is really having a moment,” Nixon says. “People are using tassels on things, on headboards and everything in between. It's about having some fun, and people are willing to have some more fun with things. It doesn't have to be serious and beige and kind of quiet and boring. Let's enjoy this ride and use their headboards.”

A Hickory Chair bed upholstered in Schumacher fabric with purples, blues and greens set in motion a whimsical, yet airy master bedroom by designer Mitchell Hill, who felt that the cathedral ceilings demanded a tall headboard. His client wanted lots of color, and Hill says he liked how the headboard played off the existing rug.

“A lot of times, the headboard can represent the character of the room,” he says.

In a traditional gray and white bedroom, the stepped shape of a custom headboard by Phoebe Howard took advantage of the 18-foot ceilings and elevated the design.

An English blue-and-white floral pattern transcended a room, from the wallpaper to the curtains to the bedding to the headboard. Designer Sarah Bartholomew used Bennison Fabrics’ American Resist pattern throughout the room, which was in a Southeastern Designer Showhouse in Atlanta.

Sometimes, however, all you need is a dynamo solid.

The scalloped design, inspired by Mediterranean homes, and brass nailheads made a navy upholstered headboard from Ballard Designs a commanding presence in an Atlanta master bedroom.

Bright blue velvet added interest to a clean-lined custom headboard, giving a modern edge to the bedroom of an English country home in Atlanta designed by Parker Kennedy Living. While the color was vibrant, the headboard was chosen to soften the room and give it an inviting feel, says designer Lance Jackson, who co-founded his firm with David Ecton. The blues in the artwork popped around the headboard, he says.

“You can add unique headboards to any room as long as you have the space. They can act as an accent piece, much like this one does — it is not a large-money investment and you can actually make one yourself without breaking the bank,” Jackson says. “You can add color like we did or pattern to really make a bedroom interesting.”