Modern Southwestern Guest Room Bedding

For years now the guest room has been black, white, purple, and yellow. It’s the first room I decorated when we bought our house, and while it was fun to do, I stopped liking it a few years ago.

Guest bedroom

When we ripped out the carpet and swapped all the beds this summer, I decided to redo the bedroom. Because that’s what I do…start projects before other projects are finished. So far I’ve painted the walls, papered the floor, replaced all the trim, and bought the anchor piece for the room, which is this rug. And now another important element is in place…the bedding.

southwestern bedroom progress

I had a hard time deciding what direction to go with the bedding. I quickly eliminated all southwestern duvets and blankets (or anything with a pattern) because I didn’t want anything to compete with the rug. So I decided on a solid sage green or smoke blue duvet and almost bought one…but then I wondered what I would do about pillows.

We all know pillows are the most fun part of new bedding, so I backed up and decided to pick my pillows first. I started snooping around Etsy and found a shop called Celine & Kate. She has tons of great pillows, and I automatically fell in love with these two…

southwestern pillows

They were PERFECT. So perfect…except for the price. The price was fair, no doubt, but still way more than I would normally pay for a pillow. So I put them in my cart and tried really really hard not to buy them. But alas, I am only so strong. So I went ahead and pulled the trigger at $39 for the blue one and $48 for the bison one (aaaaand cue the Adam freak out.) Anyway, they are beautiful, perfect, and far superior to anything I could have made. I have no regrets Adam, no regrets.

cute southwestern bedding

I needed one more set of pillows, as I decided to make a set of euro shams out of this fabric…

robert allen

I’m writing a tutorial on how to make these, but the fabric is Handcut Shapes by Robert Allen in orange crush.

(UPDATE: read the tutorial HERE)

I bought some new white sheets for the bed, because well, I always buy white sheets. I don’t think I’ve ever bought sheets that aren’t white. Oh, and to cover my ugly box spring I took the old fitted sheet, bleached the stink out of it, and put it over the box spring. Easy.

Now I had to make a duvet choice. As much as I wanted to buy a green one and pump up the color, I felt that a plain old white one would be a better choice.

white bedding

I started looking for a simple white duvet when Crane and Canopy (a bedding company) e-mailed me to see if we could work together. I chatted with Karin (co-founder of the company) and she was SO incredibly nice and helpful. She told me some stuff about sheets and bedding that I’ve never heard before, I’m going to paste a few snippets from our convo so that you may be enlightened as well…

Crane & Canopy- “I love the fabric our bedding is made from (it’s our own custom weave) – 400 thread count, extra-long-staple cotton, single pick, single ply.  Seriously, the best thing ever and it only gets better over time.”

Me –“I’m excited about new bedding…we just upgraded to a king in our master and I bought (highly rated) sheets online and they suck. They’re scratchy and stiff, no matter how much I was them. So disappointing. If yours are as amazing as they sound, I may be buying some in the future!”

Crane & Canopy – “As for your sheets, without knowing which one you purchased, it may be the thread count or the quality of the cotton that is affecting it.  Sometimes, some of the sheets are three pick or two pick (stuffing two threads so it acts like one without really weaving it in), or even two or three-ply (this is stacking two 300-thread count sheets on top of each other so it equates to 600, or three 200 thread count sheets on top of each other so it equals 600) and they get worse over time.  At the end of the day, you never know what will happen until you wash it.  That’s when the true fabric quality comes out.”

Interesting, right? Don’t you feel smarter? And kinda like you’ve had the wool pulled over your eyes all these years?

I ended up getting their Linden duvet and shams in solid white, and it is definitely great quality. Way better than my stiff 600 thread count sheets in the master bedroom.  And it only got softer when I washed it.

linden-white

(Check out all their designs HERE, they have way more than solid white.)

The last part of the bedding ensemble is the throw blanket. This is actually an old blanket we’ve owned for years and just happened to match perfectly.

throw blanket

So that’s an update on the guest room. Ideally, I’d love a rustic wood bed instead of the four-poster one, but I’m using what I have.

southwestern bedding and rug

Looking at that picture I think I need to flip the rug…all the green is on the right side, which you don’t really ever see. I think If I flipped it the room would look less matchy-matchy. Oh, and I have a really fun accent wall planned for the wall behind the bed..it’s going to change the whole feel of the room. Okay, fine, I’ll tell you..but don’t get excited because it’s not actually on my project radar yet. I’m going to turn it into a stone wall! It’s going to be awesome.

Southwestern Guest Room Project Links –

*I received a free duvet cover and shams from Crane and Canopy in exchange for using and writing about their bedding. All opinions about their product are 100% mine.  

Similar Posts

12 Comments

  1. Wow! I love the new look. And I actually love your four poster! It’s beautiful, and kinda rustic, or at least a little shabby. :) I think the white duvet cover was a good choice, the rug just pops so much. I can’t wait to see the stone wall. It’s going to be amazing!

  2. Great look, and thanks for the idea using a fitted sheet to cover the box spring! Such a simple idea!! Our son left his bed behind which has a wrought iron head and foot board –so hard to make and doesn’t lend itself to a bed skirt, so I will certainly be using your idea. The ‘stone wall’ sounds interesting :) :)

    1. Such a simple solution, right? I won’t even tell you how long it took me to figure that out. I had a skirt on it, then I decided the skirt had to go and I was going to upholster the box spring. Then I thought to use the sheet and felt like a nerd for not thinking of it sooner.

  3. The BEST sheets EVER are Sheex. Especially when you live in Texas. They don’t let you get hot at all and they are soooooo comfy! You can get them at Bed Bath & Beyond. You can delete this comment if you want. I’m not sure if you wanted opinions. :)

    1. Oops…I forgot to tell you how much I LOVE the white duvet & pillows with the decorative pillows and the rug! The colors all look GREAT together!!

  4. That is my biggest peeve about purchasing new sheets. Is the intentional misleading of their quality. (the whole 300 to 1000 thread count thing..)

    Years ago, I bought 6 different sets of Ralph Lauren 300 thread count sheets. Which I still have all of them. And they are amazing to this day. Love them. But when I bought more Lauren sheets, maybe 3-4 years ago, the quality was terrible. I believe they were 600 thread count. They were the stiff… refuse to plump up after washing sheets. I was not happy.

    Now I realize, with the comment from Crane and Canopy, I need to look closer that that weave! (BTW – love those mint green scalloped embroidery sheets!)

    … “Sometimes, some of the sheets are three pick or two pick (stuffing two threads so it acts like one without really weaving it in), or even two or three ply (this is stacking two 300 thread count sheets on top of each other so it equates to 600″….

    It is nice to know that the manufacturers figure out how to cheat. And it is not consider false advertising. Ugh.

  5. I love white bedding too! A few years ago I started to prefer plain cream bedding and then moved into white, I never get fed up of it like I did with colors and patterns. Although I do have a couple of sets of colored bedding my sister bought me, which I do use as they are really nice Northern Night sheets, but my white sets are my favorite.

    Once I learned about high thread count sheets several years ago I started to buy 3-400 thread count, then one day shopping online I found some beautiful white 1000 thread count sheets on sale!!!! They were still expensive to me, but I splurged. What a let down they were. They were absolutely no better than my 300 thread count sheets. Thanks to you I now know why!! Thank you,and btw your guest bed looks fabulous xx

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *