The main bedroom in our house is large. Certainly bigger than any bedroom we’ve ever had before – and keeping it warm and cosy in the winter, is something I work on every year. It’s great in the summer – light, spacious and airy. With the windows wide open and a couple of lovely retro fans at the bedside, we are kept cool. But come a drop in temperature, we do have to work at keeping it warm. Sometimes, in the depths of winter, we’ve given in and moved across the landing to one of the smaller bedrooms, closing up the main room. But I don’t like doing this, because it feels we’re shutting up a large part of the house, and I don’t like that feeling of creeping coldness that you get in rooms you don’t use. So, this year, we are staying put, but are ensuring that this potentially cold room, is the cosiest yet. How are we doing this doing?

Well, new curtains have already had a big impact.

We’ve always had the muslin drapes at the windows – even though we don’t actually need any coverage at all, as we’re not overlooked at all – but they soften the window wall, which is the original stone. Then we added long, cream curtains, which are great over the summer but don’t give that feeling of warmth over the winter. Over the weekend, we stayed in a hotel in Treviso, and our room had long, floor length chocolate brown, velvet curtains – and this got me thinking, so a quick trip to IKEA was done. And there were the perfect drapes…

All of our bedroom furniture is painted duck egg blue, and we have a big standing lamp in the same colour, so when teal velvet was spotted, I knew these would work. And with a drop of 3m, the exact length needed.

These curtains are from the Birtna range and each pack contains a pair. We paid €69.99 per pack and needed two, so not cheap – BUT we figured that if they kept the room warm and cosy, we’d be cutting down on using heaters. They are also black-out curtains and worked well this morning – even in the winter, the sun does shine brightly into this bedroom, but they did the trick. So, not the cheapest – but also, not the most expensive – and definitely worth it for what we wanted…