How to Design for Bedding

Your bed isn’t just a piece of furniture, it’s a place of comfort and security that deserves to be designed in a way that makes you the happiest! Luckily, Spoonflower gives you the creative freedom to print any design on a variety of bedding products such as duvet covers, sheet sets and pillows. However, how do you begin designing for these products? Continue reading for six tips towards developing your dream bedding collection with Spoonflower artists Danika Herrick and Michele Norris.

Design an entire collection for a bed. Make it easy for your customers to visualize what goes with what by doing it for them. Create simple story boards or mockups and be sure to share these images on social media with a link to your collection.

I like to start with my “hero” print and build around it. Quite often this print is larger in scale, it might have a lot of movement and can contain several colors and/or a bolder layout than the rest.

Ground this design with structured geometrics like stripes and plaid and add interest with small ditsy prints or structured block prints. Be sure to offer these supporting prints in several colors that tie to the main design.

Also, don’t forget to offer coordinating solids! If the collection is really busy, these act as nice visual breaks and work well for sheets.

Feeling stuck or overwhelmed with the concept of designing a bedding line? If pattern play isn’t your favorite thing, turn to magazines or home decor catalogs for inspiration. Tear out photos of bedding you like and then analyze what it is you appreciate about them. Are they bright and bold or quieter patterns? Are you seeing a trend of scale and color? Make note of where the different pattern types are placed and try to replicate that layout using your own designs.

I like to create a quick bedding mockup in Adobe® Photoshop®️ by layering squares and rectangles to portray the shams, pillows, sheets and duvet cover. I then fill them with my patterns and adjust the scale. 
To do this you will need to open the designs you want to use in Photoshop and save them to your Pattern Fill options. (Edit>Define Pattern>OK).

Next create a new file mockup (I like to make mine 18″ x 24″ or 46 x 61 cm). Add rectangles using the Shape Tool to represent each bedding item (place each item on their own layer). Next, choose the layer you want to add a pattern to and make sure the Properties Window is open (Window> Properties).

Under “Appearance” make sure the stroke is set to “None” (white outline with red line throughout it), click the “Fill” box and choose the last box “Pattern”. You should see all the patterns you saved here. Choose a pattern (it will autofill on your rectangle) and adjust the scale with the slider located at the bottom left of the Window box.

This exercise is so helpful to visualize your designs and see how colors and scales work together. Once you get the combination to where you like it, you can make new adjustments to your designs and upload a new bedding collection!

Sometimes bigger is better. One of my best-selling duvet patterns is actually a custom scaled design I did at a customer’s request. I normally offered this scale in 12″ (30.5 cm) and 24″ (61 cm) repeats, but a customer requested larger. I blew it up to 36″ (91.5 cm) and then forgot all about it. Months later, I noticed I was getting requests for color changes and sales had increased in bedding. This design showed really well on Spoonflower’s duvet mockup, and it didn’t feel tight or busy like the smaller scales did. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to make something this large since I often work within a 24″ wide repeat for wallpaper, but I suddenly saw the missed opportunity for so many home decor items!

Play around with scale on a few of your designs that you think would translate well on a duvet and view the mockup on Spoonflower to see how the customer sees it. Once you get it to where you like it make sure you also share these images with your customer on social media so they can easily find them. Also tag these designs with keywords like large scale, duvet and bedding.

Home redecorating can be expensive and usually not an impulsive purchase. Just as a buyer may spend time deciding on a style for their space and what the marketplace has to offer, so should you! Although fashion trends are reflected in home decor, the trends are fewer and they tend to evolve at a slower pace. Once someone invests in a look, they keep it around for awhile.

Check out home decorating magazines, books, HGTV, home decor influencers on social media and of course Pinterest! Pinterest for business offers some trend reporting. While researching, consider for whom you are designing and who is your customer? Are you designing for a primary bedroom, nursery or a guest room?

Once you’ve done your research, determined the target customer, and identified a theme, it is helpful to create a mood board to develop a cohesive bedding ensemble look. It can be digital or physical. Collect images of nature, colors, fashion photos and architecture.

Consider textures, cultures, seasons and historic time periods. Include notes, phrases or simple words. The resulting mood board will provide inspiration and direction.

Design patterns of varying scale and density that complement each other. For example, a large scale dense pattern for a duvet cover and a less complex pattern for pillows and a simple airy geometric for the sheets. Test how your patterns repeat on the various bedding products Spoonflower offers.

You might find some patterns repeat awkwardly on pillow shams, or the scale of your pattern might need to be enlarged for a duvet cover. I like to use a bedroom scene mockup to visualize how the patterns mix and match for a complete bedroom look.