Plump Up The Volume: Pimping Your Bed With Perfume Cushions

Bedding has come a long way since I was a kid, those distant days of flannelette sheets, scratchy wool blankets and swirly-patterned candlewick bedspreads. Or even the 80s, era of the drawer divan, flouncy valance and Austrian blind. Dearie me - was I glad to see the back of all things ruffly. I can't quite remember when the duvet hit Britain, but we must be talking decades ago. And now, a cursory glance round home furnishing stores like Dunelm Mill reveals that beds are not so much "made" as "dressed" these days - or even "staged". A duvet and a minimum of four pillows (clad in befrilled Oxford pillowcases for preference, the "housewife" style being as dull and outdated as its name) is just the beginning. There are now these heavy, padded quilts that you don't actually spread over the whole of the bed, but rather lay on the bottom half, not unlike a runner on a dining table, more ornament than use. And they're not cheap, these (invariably) shiny bedspreads - or half-throws or whatever you call them - the cheapest I found was about £70 in Dunelm, rising to £200 in Laura Ashley.

A WELL DRESSED BED, PROMOTING WARM FEET AND COLD MIDRIFFS?

And of course no bed is complete without a final embellishment of entirely gratuitous cushions and/or boudoir pillows, which should be artfully arranged in an asymmetric heap on top of the four pillows. Well, I am speaking of British-size beds here - in the US, where they have "Super King & Queen & President" beds that run the entire length of the room, it might not be unusual to see six or ten pillows in total, so you may need to scale up your cushion quotient accordingly.

ONE OF TWO CUSHIONS BY THE ARTIST BRIDGET DAVIES THAT SHE HAD LEFT KNOCKING AROUND HER HOUSE (I BOUGHT THEM BOTH!)

Me, I have just five "embellishment cushions" to my name, as I shall loosely call them. I don't think the term "scatter cushions" is correct for a bed: for one thing that sounds far too random, plus I think you only find scatter cushions on a sofa, and even there they would never be as artlessly "scattered" as the name suggests. And of the five cushions I own, THREE have a perfume theme. There were four, but I gave the pink cushion above to Victoria of Bois de Jasmin as a flat warming present when I went over to visit her in the summer. She has moved again since then, so in theory I may owe her another one.

So here is the roll call of my remaining cushions, split across my bedroom and the spare room (with the wrought iron bedstead).

CUSHION BY LAURA MULLINER

THE BLUE BRIDGET DAVIES CUSHION!

BLACK SHABBY CHIC VINTAGE-STYLE CUSHION WITH LAVENDER INSIDE (FROM EBAY)

Okay, so I don't really like lavender, but I think it might grow on me.

From my research on Google when I was tracking down these cushions, it struck me that there aren't too many perfume-themed accessories around generally, and cushions are no exception to this. In fairness Laura Ashley does have one design, but it is rather wan-looking by comparison, and as with everything else from the range, somewhat overpriced. And though I found some other perfume cushion designs on Etsy and Ebay, they tended to be of that rather cliche'd "Alphonse Mucha pub mirror" variety, if you know what I mean.

Do you own a perfume cushion - or two?

Is your bed pimped up with cushions of any description?

And what other items have you seen - or would you like to see - with a perfume theme to them?

I saw a lovely sponge bag, for example, on bluebellandco.com, but by contrast, drew a complete blank on tea cosies. And given my growing interest in tea pots, that could prove to be a problem, unless I figure out how to knit one!


Photo of grey bedroom from housetohome.co.uk, other photos my own