What to hang above a bed that is not a mirror

A mirror above the bed is the default because it is the thing most shops sell in that size. It is also the heaviest, most fragile object you could choose to put above your own head for eight hours a night. There are better answers, and there is one question worth asking before you pick any of them.

The safety question nobody asks

Everything above a bed hangs over a sleeping head, and a bed is the one place in the house where you cannot step out of the way. That changes the calculation in three ways. Weight matters more than it does over a sofa. Material matters, because brittle things break into pieces and ductile things bend. And time matters, because fixings in plasterboard creep: a load that held for two years can let go in the third with nothing having changed.

The practical version is simple. Above a bed, halve whatever weight you would be comfortable with on an ordinary wall. Avoid glass entirely, including glazed frames, or swap the glass for acrylic, which most framers will do for a few pounds. Avoid cast iron over the pillow end. And avoid anything with a hook, spike or projecting arm at the height where you sit up, which is usually higher than people expect once a duvet is involved.

We have a separate piece on choosing fixings and getting the height right, so this one stays on the question of what to put there. Read that one before you drill.

Get the width right before you choose anything

The single commonest error above a bed is scale. A piece that is correct on its own looks stranded over a double bed, and people respond by hanging it higher, which makes it worse.

Aim for the piece, or the group, to cover roughly two thirds to three quarters of the width of the bed. A 140cm double wants something in the region of 95cm to 105cm of visual width. A 90cm single wants 60cm to 70cm. Measure the bed, write the target width on a sticky note, and shop against that number rather than against the photograph on the listing.

If the thing you want is narrow, you have two options: accept it as a deliberately small object centred in a lot of empty wall, which can work if the wall is otherwise bare, or build the width out of two or three pieces. The second is harder to get right and we cover grouping in the hanging article.

Soft options, which carry no risk at all

A textile hung flat is the only option above a bed that cannot hurt anybody. A blanket, a quilt or a length of heavy fabric hung from a slim batten or a slender rail gives you width, colour and a soft edge, and if the fixing fails at three in the morning the worst outcome is a blanket on your face.

A flannel blanket like The Bat Blanket will hang reasonably flat if you give it a week to drop, and it can come down and go back on the bed in winter. Lighter, more open fabrics behave differently: a lace panel wants light behind or beside it to read at all, because against a dark wall an open weave disappears.

The other quiet advantage is sound. Fabric on the wall behind a bed takes the hardness out of a room with bare walls and a hard floor, which you notice most at night.

One wide shape, rather than several small ones

Above a bed, a single object with a wide silhouette does more than a careful arrangement of small ones, because you are usually looking at it from across the room rather than standing in front of it. Detail that works at reading distance is invisible at four metres. Outline is what carries.

A wreath form is the easiest wide shape to get right because it is symmetrical, it is light, and it reads as one object. A branch wreath at 40cm to 50cm across will still look under-scaled over a double, so treat it as the centre of something rather than the whole answer, or hang it over a single bed where the proportions work.

A framed piece works if you solve the glazing. A piece like The Raven in the Frame is the kind of object people want over a headboard, and the sensible version of that is to check what is in front of it and have glass swapped for acrylic if there is any.

What not to put above a bed

A shelf. This is the one we would argue about. A wall shelf above a bed puts a hard edge at head height and a collection of small hard objects directly above a pillow, and it is the fixing most likely to be overloaded, because shelves get loaded by whoever is nearest. If you want storage by the bed, put it beside the bed.

Anything cast and heavy over the pillow end. Cast iron is strong and brittle: it does not bend, it breaks, and it weighs several times what a cut sheet piece of the same size weighs. Over the foot of the bed it is a different question, and that is a reasonable compromise if you have your heart set on something heavy.

Candle sconces directly above bedding, and anything that needs a flame near a duvet. Also anything irreplaceable: the wall above a bed is where you discover that a fixing has been slowly working loose.

If it is the wrong wall, or you cannot drill

Not every bedroom wall will take a fixing, and not every tenancy allows one. The usual workaround is to stop hanging and start leaning. A large piece propped on a chest of drawers or a low bookcase behind the bed gives you the same mass at the same height, with nothing above the pillow and nothing in the wall. Put a strip of rubber or felt under the bottom edge so it cannot slide, and push the furniture tight to the wall.

If the room has a picture rail, use it. Rail hooks and a length of cord will hang a surprising amount with no holes, and the rail puts the load into timber that is already fixed to the wall.

The last option is to give up on the wall and move the interest to the bed itself. A dark bedroom with good bedding and a bare wall above the headboard looks considered. A dark bedroom with something badly scaled hung too high does not.

Questions people actually ask

Is it safe to hang a mirror above a bed?

It can be, but it is the highest risk choice available. A mirror is heavy, it is glass, and it is above a sleeping head. If you do it, fix into a stud or masonry rather than into plasterboard alone, and treat the weight rating of any anchor as a figure for a static load with no margin.

How wide should wall art be above a double bed?

Roughly two thirds to three quarters of the width of the bed. For a 140cm double that is about 95cm to 105cm of total width, either as one piece or as a group treated as one shape.

Can you hang a shelf above a bed?

We would not. The fixing carries the shelf plus whatever gets put on it, it puts hard objects directly above a pillow, and the edge sits at the height where people sit up. Bedside storage solves the same problem with none of the risk.