10 Stunning Bedrooms That Show How To Put a Bed in Front of a Window

Most people will do anything to avoid situating their bed in front of a window. After all, if there’s a view involved, you want to be looking at it from bed, not have it be behind you— but it needn’t be such a negative arrangement. In smaller homes and rentals with awkward spaces, sometimes this layout is unavoidable.

According to Sarah Barnard of Sarah Barnard Designs, “placing a bed in front of the window works well in situations where other locations can create conflicts, like blocking doorways or furnishings or creating an odd or uncomfortable space division. It’s also a good solution if there are multiple windows in the room or if the placement or height of the bed doesn’t interfere with the window’s function, so there is still an opportunity for natural airflow.”

Here, Barnard shares some of her favorite tips for placing a bed in front of a window:

• Treat the window like a decorative headboard.
• Place the bed so it is framed by the window, creating a similar effect to a decorative headboard.
• Decorative elements like open draperies, flanked artwork, or plant life can help visually extend the window’s width to create more balance.
• Windows treatments that relate to the bedding can also help integrate the bed with the window.

Here are several rooms that make a bed in front of a window look not just doable, but desirable.

This beautiful, bright, black and white bedroom in this Louisiana ranch house features a bed in front of a window, but it doesn’t cut down on the amount of light in the least. That’s thanks in part to the fact that the bed itself is wrought iron instead of having a huge headboard. But the white walls and decor certainly help keep this room crisp and bright as well. 

A different way to fashion a bed in front of a window? Turn the bed sideways. The bed in this tiny Brooklyn studio is still situated in front of the window, allowing for an open space in the middle of the room, but this arrangement allows you to see out the window while you’re in bed as well. 

If you’re forced to have a bed in front of the window but you’re concerned about blocking light, try a bed that’s low to the ground. The floor bed in this eclectic New Jersey loft is a brilliant solution to this space-saving issue.

If your bedroom has two windows instead of just one, try situating the bed in front of both windows instead of one. This gorgeous green-hued Maine bedroom does just that, and the results are stunning. 

Avoid looking like a bed in front of the window is blocking the whole window by hanging your curtains higher. Here, Emily Henderson placed her curtain rod all the way at the ceiling in order to create the illusion that less of the window is covered by the bed. Of course, a metal bed frame helps here as well. 

In an ideal bed-meets-window situation, this is what we’d all be dealing with: a large window, centrally located in a room. Take your cue from The Decorologist and pop the bed underneath, add some blinds or curtains for style and practicality — bam. Couldn’t be simpler (or lovelier).

Let’s say you have a smaller window where your bed needs to go. That can look great, but if you’re after a more formal look, use curtains to visually widen the window, extending them to just slightly wider than the bed itself as shown in this Brooklyn apartment. This gives a solid grounding to the headboard. (Bonus: you can also use this trick to make a just-off-center window look like it’s centered over the bed.)

Here’s another example of using curtains to create a headboard of sorts. The window here—spotted on Rethink Design Studio—is almost certainly off-center, but it looks like it might just be that the curtain isn’t fully drawn, don’t you think? The luxe fabric, covering the entire wall, lends a glam vibe that makes you forget about the slightly awkward placement.

Another way to go about this is to put the bed in front of a window that isn’t in the center of the room. This San Francisco apartment shows how cool this can look; the bookcase next to the bed is shorter than the bed, which allows plenty of light to enter the room despite the close placement of the bed to the window. While the space is admittedly pretty busy, you have to admit it’s expertly balanced. 

When a bed needs to go beside the window, the look is almost always more casual, though it has a relaxed charm.  If you can make use of the windowsill as a bedside table of sorts, it almost becomes a feature.