Make Love Happen

Be Happy Valentines All Year Long With A Romantic Master Bedroom And Bath

By Anita Neal Harrison

            Valentine’s Day is a good reminder of how fun and exciting romance can be. While it’s good to have an excuse for a date night, wouldn’t it be even better to have a Valentine’s Day setting that encourages romance all year long, right in the comfort of your home?
            To create a romantic refuge out of their master bedrooms and baths, couples first get to take on the titillating task of considering how to please all of their senses. The following tips will help them do just that with ideas for how to use decorating, music, fragrances and more to encourage amorous behavior.
            Happy Valentine-ing, this month and all others!

How To Create Visual Romance
            For a lot of people, the first scheme to come to mind when imagining romantic décor is that Victorian bed and breakfast look, with lots of mauve, florals and brass accents.
            There are other options.
            Karla Winchester, owner of the Columbia shop Grace, A Place for Restoration, offers a few possibilities:
            Country Cottage Romance. For this look, think cotton bedding, ruffles, a cozy fireplace, soft neutrals with shades of white and off-white, old-fashioned kerosene lanterns for lighting, and a table with an old book of love poems and a fresh bouquet of roses, lavender, daisies and asparagus fern leaves.
            City Chic Romance. Add excitement with vibrant shades of green, black and accents of fire engine red. Place an animal print area rug with large pillows in front of the fireplace or bed. Decorate with a silver serving tray, silver lamps, and candles in glass and silver hurricanes. Make the bed with satin sheets. Place a tall glass vase with long-stem red roses and calla lilies to showcase classic, simple lines.
            Exotic Romance. Fire up the imagination with bright colors and patterns: golds, reds, purples. Bring in Moroccan-star lamps, beaded shades and decorative wood and metal candleholders. Have a basket tray with a brightly accented plate for serving favorite finger foods. Use burning incense. For lighting, have bedside hanging lanterns, and on the bed have naturally woven, brightly colored, patterned linens.

            As these examples show, couples can draw romantic inspiration from a wide range of sources. The important thing is for couples to have a scheme that reflects their ideas of romance, Winchester says, and Mary Pat Abele, a design consultant at McAdams’ Ltd., points out that means giving the master bedroom some thought.
            “So many times, the master bedroom is the last place to get attention because other areas of the home are more visible,” Abele says. “It can become a catchall. It’s good to take a second look and ask, ‘What new freshness can I bring to this space?’ ”
            No matter the look chosen, mood lighting is a must, Abele adds, whether that means new recessed lighting, putting existing lights on dimmers or simply bringing in some bedside and/or floor lamps.

More Tips For Making The Master Suite Inviting

Add bedroom seating. Doing so expands the use of the space, Abele says, and gives couples more reason to head to their bedrooms. The seating must be ultra comfortable and invite couples to put their feet up — think a chaise lounge or an overstuffed chair with an ottoman. Adding an accent table will provide a place for a book or glasses of champagne, and a floor lamp would offer ambient lighting. Finish it off with a small area rug to help define the space.

Put in a fireplace. “The ambience of a fireplace can be almost hypnotic,” says Craig Nieder of Star Heating and Air Conditioning. And even when there’s no flame going, the fireplace itself adds a romantic focal point.

Homeowners have numerous options when it comes to fireplaces, whether adding or updating. Nieder offers these points for couples to consider.

If adding a new fireplace:

Direct vent and vent free gas fireplaces offer far more flexibility than wood burning units when it comes to installation.
Sometimes, getting gas and electric to the fireplace can be an issue. A plumber might be needed
It’s a good idea to have a professional come evaluate the situation to find the best solution.

If updating an existing fireplace:

An inefficient wood burning fireplace can become an efficient gas, pellet or wood burning unit with an insert. The insert goes inside the current wood burner, and the flue receives a new liner. Inserts solve the problems of damaged flues and leaky fireplaces, and there are many options for size, look and performance of inserts.
Gas log sets, now offering incredible realism, are another option for a functioning wood burning fireplace to give the look of wood without the hassles.
Modern looks are becoming more popular. Instead of a log set, new options include glass crystals, rocks and even geometric shapes.
Re-facing fireplaces that look out-of-date gives the whole room a lift.

Nieder adds that units with a full flame create the best look, but couples will want to be sure the unit offers controls for turning down the heat. Another “extra” couples might want is a lighting system, available on gas and electric fireplaces. The lights can enhance the drama of the flame or provide ambience when no heat is needed. And, Nieder notes, remote controls are nice when couples don’t want to get up from what they are doing to adjust fireplace settings.

Enhance the master bath. Give the master suite the feeling of a retreat with a luxurious master bath. For simple updates, Jenny Anderson, an interior designer for Designer Kitchens & Baths, suggests putting in a new showerhead and/or updating light fixtures — perhaps a chandelier over the tub.

For those wanting a more dramatic change, it might be time to swap out that boring old tub for one with a romantic design — claw-footed tubs remain popular — and/or therapeutic features. Air tubs provide a massage experience while still allowing users to indulge in bubble baths, and even mud and oatmeal baths. Also available are tubs with chromatherapy lighting — colored light that can be customized to suit users’ moods.
Another renovation would be to get rid of the tub altogether to make room for a luxurious shower with multiple showerheads delivering various spa experiences — from massage jets to relaxing rain.

Arouse with aroma. When creating a setting for romance, couples should take advantage of the power their sense of smell has to stir deep feelings.

“Our sense of smell is directly associated with a part of our brain that brings up emotions,” says Christina Kelley, owner of Makes Scents. “So when we smell something, it can be a trigger to an emotion.”
There are three approaches couples can take when choosing scents to enhance romance:

Couples can choose scents that take them back to a past romantic high. “So maybe they took a honeymoon to Hawaii and it smelled like pikake [a fragrant Hawaiian flower] out their window,” Kelley says. “Bringing in that scent to the bedroom can reignite those memories.”
Couples can choose scents for therapeutic properties. Different natural aromas trigger different chemical responses in the brain, with some fragrances considered to be aphrodisiacs, such as rose, jasmine, ylang-ylang (a Southeast Asia flower), sandalwood and vanilla.
Couples can choose scents that take them somewhere now. Perhaps a couple never got that honeymoon to Hawaii but have fantasized about going. Bringing in the pikake fragrance could help transport them there for the night. And the next date night, breaking out that fragrance would allow them to build on a new romantic association.

As for how to infuse a room with fragrance, there are a wide range of scented products available, including candles, linen sprays, oil burners, cartridges, etc. Another option is scented personal care products, from perfume to massage oils.

Turn on the music. Music is a must for setting the mood.

“Just think about the role music has at the movie theater,” says Anne Moore, owner of D&M Sound. “It really does the job of transporting you to that place where you are feeling what the actors are feeling.”
Bringing music into the bedroom can be as simple as setting up some high-quality speakers to connect to a computer, TV or MP3 player. Or it can be as comprehensive as installing a whole-house music system to give couples fingertip access to their entire music collections from all areas of their homes.
Moore also mentions another music resource couples should check out: Pandora. This free service is available through the internet and can be connected to home music systems. Pandora users enter a favorite artist, track or genre (or comedian), and Pandora creates a personalized station offering the user’s selection and other music like it.
“You can choose not just romantic music but romantic classical music or romantic R&B,” Moore says. “It gives you much more flexibility and specificity.”
Pandora’s website is www.pandora.com.

With visual romance, sensuous fragrances, fireplace ambience, a luxurious bath experience and the perfect music, the master bedroom and bath will encourage couples to remember that romance is not to be reserved for special occasions.
Now, for the difficulty couples might find in leaving their romantic havens — well, that will just make returning to them, and to each other, all the more desirable.