I painted my bedroom a combo of one wall blue and three walls light tan. My bed has an ivory duvet at the time so neutral won out.

I'm buying a new mattress (going from double to california king!) so with that comes new headboard, sheets, everything. I found a good price on a Thayer Coggins upholstered headboard in dark gray and I like it - but I can't tell if it clashes with the existing colors.

Advice? Opinions? I'm buying sheets and a duvet so I could use color advice with that, and I'd like to leave the wall colors just because I painted this less than 6 months ago.

See below:
http://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t.../Headboard.jpg

 

Most folks purchase the bed linens and cover first and pull colors out of the ready-made pallet for wall color, accents, and accessories. By painting first, finding bed cover that pulls together headboard and wall colors may be challenging.

 

The pic of the headboard reads almost choc brown, not gray. It's hard to tell from these pics. Gray usually has other colors as an undertone. If the gray has a blue undertone to it, that's great and would work well assuming the walls and headboard are similar tones. Dark blue gray and light golden brown can work well together. You might consider moving your bed, if you can, to the light brown wall and pulling in light (golden) brown, blue and cream in your bedding. Use the lighter brown or cream colors against the headboard (pillows) then blue/blue gray against those pillows. If your headboard and blue walls are too far apart in color, you should consider repainting. Also, as you shop for your pillows, that will influence your colors. You want to pull the blue colors from the walls onto your bedding as well as the light brown. If you could find the same/similar gray to the headboard for your duvet and then sheets that pull in that light (golden) brown, that could like nice. Consider hanging a picture with all those colors (blue/gray, cream and light (golden) brown over the bed. You may even want to consider adding a third color for punch (if it's a blue gray, orangy red works well) in the accents and be sure to add that color to your bedding. Also, not sure what you're doing w/ that wooden corner piece but it seems there's not enough room for it in the current location. If you could find small (not too small but that fit the space if you can move the bed) that would coordinate with the frame of a pic over the bed and other furniture in the room. With those colors, you can use same wood tone as the corner piece or an red orangy cherry.

If you keep the bed on the same wall, better for your headboard to be the light brown color. If you already purchased, then it can be remedied with large euro pillows in light brown against the dark gray headboard then similar shade of gray pillow against those and if you choose another accent color like orangy red or orange.

Hope that helps.

 

Most definitely pull the colors together with a picture over the bed, pillows, accessories, and accents. The gray/brown headboard and gray/blue wall make the very yellow-toned corner shelf stick out like a sore thumb. As noted, there's not enough room in that corner for the shelf. The idea is to give the illusion of greater space. Overcrowdiing a room and using furniture that is too large a scale for a room tend to cramp the space both visually and physically. Perhaps there is another corner where the shelf can be used. If so, paint it a gray/brown to match the headboard.