How to Decorate a Surfer Room

The main starting point of any bedroom is the bedding itself. The most prominent feature in the room will be the comforter or duvet cover. This is known as the “top of the bed.”

I choose one of our own bedding patterns we had designed for us just for bedding. This particular print, DM301 – Cruisin’ Hawaii, was printed a little larger than a normal Hawaiian print to work with the size and scale of a bedspread. Obviously comforters are much bigger than a Hawaiian shirt so a larger scale Hawaiian print version looks best on a bed. This particular print works well on bedding because the pattern repeat runs from top to bottom, or in lines up and down the bed giving the bedding a clean “line” look.

Now that you have your top of the bed picked out, you can move onto the rest of the bedding you will need. The next step is to pick out a coordinating pair of sheets. For this surf room look, we used an all over “tossed” hibiscus sheet set in a dark navy color way. The hibiscus sheet set was chosen to coordinate with the hibiscus flowers in the comforter. We used a “tossed” hibiscus flower and a darker color to give it some contrast and depth. We didn’t want the entire bed ensemble to blend together by using a striped sheet set, or the same primary blue color way found in the comforter. The pillowcases that come with your sheet set, will also help to break up the top of the bed design. We recommend using a sheet set that can pull out a color from the comforter and shams.

Once you have chosen your bedding, it is much easier to start adding other items to coordinate or match with your centerpiece.  Some people like to match the bed skirt in the same color as the sheet set, and I recommend this when using a solid color sheet set, but for our surfer room, I wanted to bring in another color by using a raffia grass bed skirt. It is basically a hula skirt that the Hawaiian dancers use, but we made it into a bed skirt that goes all the way around the bed. The raffia not only keeps our surfer theme going, but also adds a warm color around the bed. Raffia looks great on the hardwood floors because it offers a subtle transition into the wood floor coloring.

To showcase the bedding a little more, we like to use matching window valances. Since a window valance does nothing to keep the sun out, we also raffia thatched pull down window shade to help us sleep at night. The raffia pull down shade also matches with our bed skirt, and keeps the island vibe going through out the room.

The bedding is the biggest decision you will make, and I always recommend buying the bedding you like first, and then start looking for room accents and paint for the walls. Picking out surf themed décor for the rest of the room is the fun and easy part. There are so many options to choose from now.

When you paint your walls I suggest using a contrasting color so your bedding won’t get lost. We used a sandy color to keep with our surfer theme room. You don’t want to dark of a color for this bedding, or all white walls. The soft sand tones add a subtle background to your bedding centerpiece.

For accessories, we got some great surf signs and posters from a Surfer magazine. We used some metal signs and simply nailed them right in the wall with finishing nails, but you can also frame them, which adds a little elegant more formal look.

We found an old surfboard at a garage sale and put that in the corner of the room, and also went to the beach and collected some seashells, which we placed on our shelf.  A conch shell was placed in the window sill. That we had to purchase from a shell store. We thought a lifeguard hat would make a great touch too, so we bought one of those and hung it under the shelf. Have to watch the sun burn these days!

We hope this article helps you with your home decorating, and remember if you ever have any decorating questions, feel free to ask!