A few weeks ago I shared that we were getting close to the finish line with our bathroom and starting to think about moving into our bedroom. But I did share one little lie in that post. I said I bought a new duvet cover, which isn’t true!
I was SO close to ordering one, but then I second guessed myself. Rug, curtains, and sheets? No problem. Duvet cover? SO much second guessing.
What’s a girl to do?? Well, of course, obsess over the question for a while until ultimately turning to Photoshop! As I shared in my Instagram stories, I decided just to mockup our wall color + bed to help get an idea of what would work and what wouldn’t.
Ready to see what I came up with??
Shopping for a Duvet Cover
Sources: Background Image | Bed | White Bedding | Grey Gingham Bedding | Blue and White Striped Bedding | Neutral Grey Pattern Bedding | Green Velvet Bedding | Yellow Velvet Bedding | Navy Gingham Bedding | Neutral Stripe Bedding
Whew, that’s a lot of options!
How to Quickly Mockup Your Room in Photoshop to Choose Bedding
This was SUCH a helpful tool for me, so I thought I would share how I did it. Keep in mind that this is very rough photoshopping (though you can decide how good you want it to be to some degree). It’s really just to give you a good idea, not to make beautiful images.
I actually never intended to share it, but here we are.
Step 1: Find images of your wall color, bed, and anything else you want to try your bedding with.
Our bed is pictured online and this post had a bunch of images of the wall color for me to choose from, so this was a very easy step. Save the images (be sure they download as jpegs or pngs, not webpages) or screen shot them.
Step 2: Open images in Photoshop and select the bits you want.
Drag the images to your Photoshop and open them in different documents, which will show up in different tabs. Create a new blank document as well.
Using the quick selection tool:
just click the bit of the image you want (ie, the background or the bed), and a dotted line will appear around it. Keep clicking to select the entire part of the image that you want. Hold the option key to deselect if you accidentally select something you don’t want.
These don’t have to be perfect. You can resize and cover issues to some degree, plus, you’re just using this to get a general idea. Here’s how the paint color looked when I selected it from an image:
Step 3: Paste in new document and resize so everything makes sense.
Create a new document/tab in Photoshop or go to the blank one if you made one already.
Paste your wall and bed into it, and resize so things make sense together. It’s okay if it looks a little crazy at this point, you’ll mostly cover things up when you pop your bedding options in. Just look at what mine looked like at this point:
A little crazy, but it’s fine.
Step 4: Save images of bedding you like, and repeat the process.
Now you basically just do the same thing over again, saving, selecting, copying, and pasting bedding you like into your image.
Because of the way the bed image I had was oriented, I got the best results from images of bedding I liked like when the bed was facing forward, like this:
If the bedding you like doesn’t have an image like this, you can try anyway just to see how colors work together or find a similar option that has an easier to use image.
You won’t always be able to get it perfect—this bedding image had a water glass and some accessories at the foot of the bed, for instance:
But that’s fine! It will still give you a good idea.
Step 5: Use the eye on the layers panel to test different options quickly.
I just pasted all of the bedding options into the same document and layered/resized them right on top of each other. Then, to see just one, I used the eye on the layers panels to make all of them go away except for one.
This also helped because one bedding option had a dark grey pillow in the background, the color of the sheets we got, so I could layer bedding on top of that option (mostly covering the duvet but with the pillow peeking out) to see if a bedding option would play nice with the sheets.
Boom! You did it! You’re all set to test as many mockups of your room as you want!
How to Quickly Mockup Your Room Without Photoshop to Choose Bedding
I know not everyone has Photoshop though, so I decided to do some research and see if I could do the same process without Photoshop. Spoiler: yep!
It’s a bit more tedious but possible—just be prepared to either have it not be perfect or to spend a while messing around with it.
Shout out to this blog post from Emily Henderson (I’m such an EHD fangirl this week!) for helping me figure this out.
Step 1: Find images of your wall color, bed, and anything else you want to try your bedding with.
The first step is the same! You have to download images of your background, bed, bedding, and whatever else you want in the image. Try to find images with minimal detail in the background if possible.
Again, save the images as jpegs or pngs or screen shot them.
Step 2: Open images in Preview and select the bits you don’t want.
This is the reverse of the Photoshop method! Instead of selecting the things we do want, we’ll go ahead and select what we don’t want (ie, the background).
This is the tedious part so get ready.
Open the images in Preview or just double click them. Then open the toolbar by clicking the pen image (or view > show markup toolbar). Click on the little magic wand and start selecting the background.
Click, drag, the selection will turn red, and you can delete. Be careful not to select the bits you want to keep, the bedding in this case.
If your image is high contrast, this will be quick and easy, but for an image like this, it took longer.
Once you like how it looks (it doesn’t have to be perfect!) just save the image. Repeat for the background (if you want to—see below), the bed, and bedding options.
Step 3: Open your blank canvas and insert images (Google Slides).
Create a blank presentation and drop your background image into it. I didn’t do any editing of the background this time because I figured I’d just layer the other images on top.
Then, I popped our bed in. For the bed, I removed the white background but left the bedding in because again I figured I’d just layer the images to hide the bedding. If you want a cleaner end result, go ahead and removed the bedding as I showed in the Photoshop example.
Step 4: Duplicate your slide now to compare multiple options.
If you’re going to be comparing multiple options, duplicate this slide so you can just pop a new bedding on each one.
Step 5: Insert bedding and compare.
Okay, remember how I said it didn’t have to be perfect? On that wicker bed pictured above, I did my best, but I couldn’t get rid of it all, at least without spending way too long working on it.
Here’s where I landed in Preview:
So, when I pasted it on the bed, you can still see those issues I had with the texture in the bed:
Point being, whatever you leave will still be visible, so do as much or as little as you want. I think this is good enough to get an idea, but if you’re a perfectionist, go for it!
Step 6: Get a better view with a Screen Shot.
In the presentation, you’ll still have some excess white space and bits of the bed, etc. hanging around. (See above how I have the edge of the bed and you can see where the edge of the image was for the gingham bedding?).
If you want to get a better idea of the final result, just take a screen shot cropped closer, like this:
Boom! Not bad, huh? And no need for expensive Adobe software.
Using Mockups to Shop
This was such a useful exercise for me! For instance, I thought that mustard velvet quilt would work great against a blue wall, but when I mocked it up…it was a no for me dawg. The green velvet is stunning but I also love some of the neutral options.
Which one do you think we picked?? You’ll have to wait to find out! (I’ll probably share a peek tomorrow, but I haven’t decided yet!)
Tell me in the comments if you’d use this as a shopping tool or ask away if you have any questions!
PS: Not done shopping? Check out this post: shopping for blanket baskets.
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