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"Valentine&amp;#039;s Day may be over, but that doesn&amp;#039;t mean your boudoir shouldn&amp;#039;t keep romance alive year-round.   Belgravia White bedding from Blissliving Home   Your bedroom should be your special retreat: the quiet, soothing space you go at the end of the day to relax and get away from it all. We asked Mei Xu, Creator and CEO of Blissliving Home and Chesapeake Bay Candle, for her tips for creating a bedroom that keeps Valentine&amp;#039;s Day in the air all year long. GH: Mei, between your two businesses \u2014 bedding and candles \u2014 you&amp;#039;ve pretty much got romance covered! Mei Xu: It&amp;#039;s true! And both are really great ingredients for creating a romantic bedroom. Candles, for starters. Think about when you have a dinner party and you turn down the lights and eat by candlelight \u2014 it&amp;#039;s just magical. And in the bedroom it&amp;#039;s the same thing. People look more beautiful by candlelight, for one thing, and for another they&amp;#039;re a good way to have a little light in the bedroom (so you can see what you&amp;#039;re doing, or where you&amp;#039;re going if you&amp;#039;re walking to the bathroom, say) without the harsh brightness of incandescent lights. GH: When you&amp;#039;re choosing candles, are there certain fragrances that have more romantic connotations than others? MX: Fragrance combinations with sandalwood, jasmine with musk notes, and amber are all mood-enhancing, for both men and women. They&amp;#039;re easy to find in most candle brands. GH: And what about the bed\u2014that other key ingredient? MX: I&amp;#039;m Chinese, and when I was growing up in school the teachers would say &amp;quot;when you paint a dragon, the eyes are the most important part \u2014 they make it come to life.&amp;quot; And in the bedroom, the bed is the eye of the dragon. It&amp;#039;s the soul of the room. So, if you want to create a romantic look, the bed should be very soft and inviting, with lots of pillows. GH: Can you share any tips on choosing the best bedding? MX: Don&amp;#039;t get too hung up on thread count. We tend to want to quantify things, so we look for 500 or 600 thread-count sheets. But you have to keep in mind that the way a manufacturer treats the sheets will have as big an effect on the softness as the thread count. You can buy 1,000 thread-count sheets that have a sandy feel, because of the way they&amp;#039;ve been treated. So my best advice is to feel any linens you&amp;#039;re considering buying. Open the package, or ask for a swatch, and touch them. They should be silky and soft \u2014 and you may be able to find that in a much lower thread-count than you think. GH: Where do you think bedding trends are going in the next couple of years? MX: We&amp;#039;re designing our 2012 collections now, and we&amp;#039;re seeing two big trends. The technology-driven neon colors \u2014 think of an iPod Nano, for example \u2014 aren&amp;#039;t going anywhere. So brights are going to stay big. But the other strong direction is the French-inspired look, which is dominated by crisp white and accented by muted grays, taupes, sand colors, and &amp;quot;dirty&amp;quot; purples. It&amp;#039;s a softer look, and very fresh because of all the white. GH: I love that style (see the Belgravia White linens pictured above). Texture is a big part of it, too, isn&amp;#039;t it? MX: Yes, and to pick that up in the bedding collections we&amp;#039;ve done some linens with deep pleats, and some pretty textural accent pillows. Touch is such an important part of the way we experience bedding. GH: That&amp;#039;s true. And it&amp;#039;s obviously key to the whole &amp;quot;romance&amp;quot; theme we&amp;#039;ve been talking about. MX: Of course! Romance is all about experience, so you want to consider how you&amp;#039;ll experience the room. A cluttered room is distracting \u2014 at least to me. I prefer a room with less furniture, and fewer knickknacks. That allows the harmonious energy to flow more freely. Also, remember the little things, like the temperature of the room. If it&amp;#039;s too warm or too cold you won&amp;#039;t be comfortable. Set the thermostat before bedtime. It&amp;#039;s a great idea to put out a carafe of water with a couple of glasses, too. But I really think the most important thing of all is to make it your own personal space. It has to feel right, and comfortable to you\u2014not like something you&amp;#039;ve seen in a magazine, or a friend&amp;#039;s bedroom. You have to love it because it&amp;#039;s truly yours. And that&amp;#039;s really what romance is all about! "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/home/decorating-ideas/a24103/romantic-bedroom-decorating-ideas/>