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In this lively-yet-serene bedroom, designer Rita Konig’s new collection of fabrics and wallpapers for Schumacher creates a engaging dialogue between pattern, color, and carefully considered details.

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Rita Konig Shares the Secrets to Creating Swoon-Worthy Bedrooms

Keep comfort in mind without skimping on style.

October 17, 2024

An aesthete with a yen for cosseting spaces that feel accumulated and highly personal, Rita Konig is something of a bedroom guru. “Bedrooms are sanctuaries, and I want them to feel far away from the rest of the house,” says the London-based decorator. Her dimensional approach is written all over her debut fabric and wallpaper collection for Schumacher, a pitter-patter of fresh florals, small-scale prints, and global motifs, all in nuanced textures and palettes—ideal tools for composing retreats that dreams are made of.

Konig in the bedroom of her London home with walls upholstered in Serena Garland fabric. All fabrics and wallpapers by Rita Konig for Schumacher.

Francesco Lagnese

USE A FABRIC SOFTENER

“Bedrooms can become sharp very easily—pull in a metal-framed bed, overhead lights, and wooden nightstand, and you might bruise yourself on all the edges,” says the designer. Her solution? Wrap walls in a paper-backed fabric for a hush-inducing tactility, or for maximum plushness, upholster them. “If you cover the walls in a battened fabric, you wake up with the impression that it snowed in the night; there’s a quietude to it,” she says.

CREATE A COCOON

“A canopied four-poster can be like your own little private island,” Konig explains. Bedhangings in filmy, floaty textiles lend feminine mystique, while graphics and elemental solids deliver a masculine edge. Or combine them for the best of both worlds, like she did in the guest room of a pared-down 1920s Georgian in New York. “Lining a plain fabric canopy with a patterned sheer on the inside creates an ethereal effect,” she adds.

  • The bed canopy (in Schumacher’s Finn Heavyweight Linen) of a New York guest room is lined in Rita Konig’s Margot Linen Sheer with a pillow in her Eddie Woven Hand Block Print; Sasha and Minnie snuggle on a Hollywood at Home bedcover and Matouk’s Luca Hemstitch sheets.

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  • The canopy’s green trim (in Schumacher’s Langham Union cloth) ties the room together; Ronnie fabric (on vintage armchair) and Olive wallpaper by Konig for Schumacher; painted floors by Tim Murphy for SuperStrata.

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BALANCE CHAOS WITH COHESION

In the best English tradition, Konig blends seemingly disparate motifs with aplomb. “Palette is a very useful discipline that allows you to be quite wayward in your mixing,” she says—in other words, stick to the same color family and the sky’s the limit. For the primary bedroom of the same New York house, keeping to a cream-and-ivory scheme allowed Konig to mix a blowsy botanical with modern elements without seeming discordant.

Throw pillows in Ronnie and Terry fabrics from Konig’s collection add pep to a skirted settee.

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EDIT EXPANSES

“Flat color is hard,” says Konig, who avoids rigid monochrome planes. Both the primary and guest rooms in New York boast graphic Bunny Mellon–inspired painted floors—“a nice relief” from the monotone that pervades underfoot elsewhere in the house. With the same idea in mind, she used a small-scale pattern on the guest room walls for a result that’s more soothing than busy. “Sometimes those small prints just feel like a hug,” she notes.

In another bedroom, walls are covered in Rita Konig’s Elizabeth Chintz. She used a strip of the same fabric to trim the leading edge of simple linen curtains. The throw pillow is in Ronnie, her bias-stripe batik. Lamps, Christopher Spitzmiller; Luca Hemstitch bed linens, Matouk; painted floors by Tim Murphy for SuperStrata.

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CONSCIOUSLY UNCOUPLE

Konig’s furnishing style follows a similar mix-and-match philosophy. “I rarely use pairs” of nightstands or lamps, she says, and always includes “proper furniture” like the 18th-century bowfront chest of drawers she uses as an end table in her own London retreat or the flaky painted antique settee. “They balance the softness of the upholstery,” she explains. “Rooms that are only upholstery aren’t living spaces—they’re showrooms.”

KEEP A FEW SECRETS

For an indulgent surprise, Konig will sometimes line solid curtains with a pretty print. “It’s luxurious!” she says. “You can see it from the outside when they’re drawn.”

  • Olive fabric covers an antique Swedish chair;
    curtains in Schumacher’s Finn Heavyweight Linen are trimmed in Konig’s Elizabeth Chintz.

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  • Bathroom walls are covered in Serena Stripe wallpaper by Rita Konig for Schumacher; its coordinating fabric is used for the shower curtain

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THIS ARTICLE ORIGINALLY APPEARED IN VOLUME 14 OF FREDERIC MAGAZINE. CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE!