7 tips for designing an eco-friendly bedroom

The best eco-friendly bedrooms don’t just have a small carbon footprint. They’re also stylish and comfortable. So they look good, feel good and do good.

Creating an eco-bedroom does require some effort. But the good news is you can design a bedroom you’re proud of without investing massive amounts of time and money.

How? Check out these seven tips for creating an eco-friendly bedroom …

Minimise air conditioning

The less cooling you do during summer and the less heating during winter, the more eco-friendly your bedroom will be.

During the warmer months, if you use blockout blinds to keep the hot sun out of the room during the day, you might not need air-conditioning when you go to bed. During the colder months, if you sleep with an ultra-warm quilt, you might not need a heater at night.

So what’s the best quilt for winter? Well, Hungarian goose down quilts and Canadian goose down quilts are among the warmest and best natural insulators in the world.

Beauty your bedroom with houseplants

Here's an eco-friendly bedroom tip you'll love: buy some plants for your bedroom. Indoor plants are not only beautiful, they also remove carbon dioxide and toxins from the air.

That means houseplants can reduce the amount of harmful greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and make your home environment healthier

Unplug appliances when they’re not being used

One of the best eco bedroom tips is to disconnect your TV, bedside light, stereo and other electrical appliances when they’re not being used.

You might not realise that even when you switch your appliances off, they continue burning power if they’re still plugged in. So, your appliances should be either on or off.

Leaving them in ‘standby’ mode consumes unnecessary electricity, which is bad for your carbon footprint and your wallet.

Get carbon-neutral bedding

The wrong bedding harms the planet … but the right bedding is good for the planet. If you want to design an eco-friendly bedroom, you should make sure your bedding is carbon-neutral – i.e. the amount of carbon dioxide that was emitted in manufacturing the bedding was then neutralised with an equivalent amount of carbon offsets.

You can buy carbon-neutral organic bedding like this latex mattress, this organic mattress underlay or these latex pillows ( classic and contour shape). They’re not only comfortable, they’re also environmentally friendly.

Browse freecycling websites for stylish furnishings

Ever heard of freecycling? This is where people give away products they no longer need, rather than dump them in landfill.

If you scour community websites like Freecycle, Trash Nothing and Ziilch, you’ll be surprised to discover just how much bedroom treasure you’ll find. In return, freecycle the bedroom furnishings you no longer want.

Install eco-friendly lightbulbs

Does your bedroom use traditional incandescent lightbulbs? If so, you should replace them with halogen incandescents, compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) or light-emitting diodes (LEDs). According to the US Department of Energy, energy-efficient lightbulbs:

• Use 25%-80% less energy than traditional incandescents
• Last 3-25 times longer

Use non-toxic paint

The next time you paint your bedroom, buy non-toxic products – i.e. paints and finishes without volatile organic compounds (VOC).

By choosing zero-VOC products, over high- or even low-VOC alternatives, you're reducing the amount of toxic emissions that go into the atmosphere.