How to Make a Magazine-Worthy Bed (In Real Life)

If you dream of a Pinterest-worthy bed, but find your efforts usually result in something kind of sad and deflated-looking, read on! Here’s how to make a magazine-worthy bed.

I’m 43 years old, and I’m still learning how to make a bed properly. I style interiors (including beds) for interior design photography for a living, and I’m still learning new ways to pull off a magazine-worthy bed all the time. So don’t feel bad if you feel like you can never get it quite right. I’ve always believed that making your bed every day sets you up for success, gives you a sense of momentum, and just has a way of making your whole room feel so much cleaner. I think most of us know how to make a bed in a way that’s tidy and functional, but it’s the finishing touches that seem to baffle us. We may see an idea in a photo and try it on our own bed, only to find that it doesn’t quite look the same. I thought it would be fun today to share a few little tricks that I’ve learned to use when I’m styling beds for photoshoots and in my own home. After styling hundreds of beds, and lots of trial and error, I’ve learned a few things that actually work in almost every situation.

What You Need (and Don’t Need) for a Magazine-Worthy Bed

If you’ve ever sat down to look at the price of bedding and felt a little bit of sticker shock when you realized how many thousands of dollars it would actually cost to create the look that you see in bedding advertisements, this is for you. There are a few places where buying top-quality pieces really will make a difference, but you can fill in the rest with box-store basics and even thrifted finds. For instance, high-end quilts are the perfect finishing touch for the end of the bed, but the bedspread you use underneath can be more basic.

You will need:

• Sleeping pillows + 2-4 extra bed pillows that you don’t sleep on
• Sheets – basic sheets are fine here, but bamboo or linen really do look and feel a little extra luxurious
• One basic bedspread, coverlet, quilt, or duvet that covers the entire bed – preferably oversized to cover well on all sides
• One very beautiful quilt or an extra-large throw blanket for the end of the bed
• 4-6 large decorative throw pillows – down or down alternative inserts are non-negotiable, covers can be simple or handmade

What you don’t need is to start with an expensive bed. Even a utilitarian bed frame with a simple headboard can look absolutely stunning once the bed has been layered and decorated properly with the right bedding pieces. You also don’t need the best of the best for every single piece. In fact, you can probably use a lot of what you already have, and maybe just think about using it a little bit differently.

Designer Tricks of the Trade for a Magazine-Worthy Bed That You Should Know About (and then ignore)

When I’m styling for photoshoots, we’re typically working with real design projects in real, functional rooms, in real homes. This means that we’re styling real beds that are actually slept in and we have to make them look absolutely amazing for photos. This is not the case with the beds that you see in bedding ads.

The pillows that you see in advertisements are typically brand new and have never been slept on or leaned against while someone read a book. Often, stylists may stuff two pillows into a pillowcase for an extra fluffy look. The same goes for duvets and duvet covers. One common trick is to stuff two comforters into a single duvet cover to give it a really full, lofty look. This does look beautiful, but can get very expensive for the average person and it doesn’t make the duvet very comfortable for actual sleeping.

If the middle of a mattress looks absolutely perfect in a photo, it may be because stylists will often place a board on top of a mattress to get a really smooth look before layering it with several blankets. This is, of course, not at all practical for real life, so it’s not a very helpful trick at all for most people. So just know that those perfect beds aren’t actually functional beds at all a lot of he time

More home decoration guidance for your room update: 5 Essential Pattern Layering Combinations for Traditional Homes

Bed-Making Trick Number 1: Hide Your Sleeping Pillows

No matter how fancy or expensive your sleeping pillows are, they just won’t look good after being slept on. If you’re going for a magazine-worthy bedding look, the best thing you can do is hide them. You can either lay your pillows down flat and pull your sheets and blankets up over them, then cover them with more un-slept-on pillows with fresh shams or pillowcases, or you can stand them up against the headboard and place fresh bed pillows directly in front so that the sleeping pillows aren’t visible.

After that, you can layer euro shams or larger decorative pillows in front and soon you’ll forget the the crumpled, wrinkled sleeping pillows are even there.

Decorating Bedding Pillow Deep-Dive: How Many Pillows Should Go on a King Size Bed?

Trick Number 2 for a Magazine-Worthy Bed: Go for Perfectly Imperfect

As previously mentioned, a lot of the very perfect looking beds that you see in photos aren’t really beds at all, so attempting to replicate that perfect, tidy look is really just an exercise in frustration. Yes, it really is. Stop trying.

Leaning into a lived-in, perfectly imperfect look will not only make your bed look amazing, it will save your sanity a little bit as well. If you aren’t able to get your sheets and bedspread to lay perfectly flat, then don’t. Pull back one corner of the top sheet and blanket for a cozy, inviting look.

If your toss cushions just don’t look symmetrical and you can’t get them to line up perfectly straight. Try layering them asymmetrically across the bed, mixing sizes, patterns, and colors (while keeping the sleeping pillows hidden, of course.)

Rather than trying to fold a throw blanket perfectly at the end of your bed, try scrunching and rumpling a larger quilt across the entire bottom of your bed. This is your excuse to splurge on that heirloom-quality Serena and Lily quilt you’ve had your eye on, as this is the part of the bed-making that really impacts the overall look of the bed. Standard-size throw blankets always look too wimpy and small in this application, so a full-size quilt or an extra large blanket is really the right choice here.

Bed-Decorating Trick Number 3: Distract the Eye

Trying to make a bed perfectly is really just inviting the eye to search for the tiny imperfections and zoom in on them. There will be plenty of imperfections in a real bed, but if you can tell the eye where to look, you really won’t notice them. Focus on choosing a beautiful color, texture, or pattern for the quilt at the end of the bed as well as the pillow that sits at the very front of your pillowscape. Everything else can just disappear into the soft, cozy, expertly-layered background.

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