Custom Headboards: How to Design Your Dream Bedroom
If there is one element of a bedroom that sets the tone for everything else, it is the headboard. A well-chosen headboard anchors the entire room, adds warmth and texture, and gives the bed — the focal point of any bedroom — a sense of intention and completeness. Yet it is also one of the most commonly overlooked pieces of furniture in the home.
Off-the-shelf headboards are fine, but they are designed to suit everyone, which means they truly suit no one in particular. A custom headboard, on the other hand, is designed specifically for your bedroom, your bed, and your taste. It is one of the most effective ways to turn a functional room into a space that genuinely feels like your own.
At Best Beds & Furniture, we have been crafting custom headboards for New Zealand homes from our workshop in Papakura, Auckland, for years. In this guide, we cover everything you need to know — from style and fabric to sizing and the design process — so you can approach your next bedroom project with confidence.
Why Headboards Matter More Than You Think
Beyond aesthetics, a headboard serves several practical purposes that are easy to underestimate until you have one.
Comfort and Support
An upholstered headboard provides a soft, padded surface to lean against while reading, watching television, or working on a laptop in bed. Without one, you are either propped against a hard wall or stacking pillows in an arrangement that inevitably collapses.
Wall Protection
Pillows pressed repeatedly against a painted wall leave marks, grease stains, and scuffs over time. A headboard creates a buffer that protects your walls and keeps the room looking clean.
Insulation and Warmth
In older New Zealand homes where walls can run cool in winter, a headboard adds a meaningful layer of insulation between your pillow and the wall — keeping draughts at bay and the head of your bed noticeably warmer.
Visual Anchoring
In design terms, a bedroom without a headboard can feel visually unresolved — as if something is missing. A headboard draws the eye, establishes the bed as the room's centrepiece, and creates a compositional anchor around which the rest of the room can be arranged.
Popular Headboard Styles
The right style of headboard depends on the overall aesthetic of your bedroom, the height of your ceilings, and how much visual weight you want the bed to carry. Here are the most popular options we work with at Best Beds.
Buttoned and Tufted
The buttoned or tufted headboard is a timeless classic. Deep button tufting creates a grid of soft diamonds across the upholstered surface, giving the piece a rich, layered texture that reads as both luxurious and inviting. It suits traditional, transitional, and Hollywood Regency-style bedrooms particularly well.
Tufted headboards work best in velvet, boucle, or similar textured fabrics, which allow the tufting to catch the light and create visual depth. They are a bold statement piece — and a well-made one will not date quickly.
Slimline Panel
A slimline panel headboard is the go-to choice for contemporary, Scandinavian, and minimalist interiors. It features a clean, flat or gently padded surface with no tufting or button detail — just a smooth, tailored form. The simplicity is the point.
Slimline panels work well in linen, cotton, or performance fabrics and pair beautifully with timber bed frames and neutral bedding. They are also a practical option for rooms with lower ceilings, as the reduced visual mass keeps the space feeling open.
Wingback
The wingback headboard is derived from the classic wingback armchair, with padded "wings" that extend forward from the main panel on either side of the pillow area. This creates a cocoon-like feel that is both intimate and architecturally striking.
Wingback headboards suit larger bedrooms where the scale of the piece can be fully appreciated. They work particularly well in heritage or boutique hotel-style bedrooms and are available in a range of heights and wing depths to suit different rooms and preferences.
Floating (Wall-Mounted)
A floating or wall-mounted headboard is fixed directly to the wall rather than attached to a bed frame. This creates a clean, seamless look and makes it much easier to change your bedding without manoeuvring around frame posts and fittings.
Floating headboards can be made at virtually any width and height, which makes them especially popular for super king beds or for spanning the full width of a bedroom wall to create a dramatic feature. They can be upholstered as a single panel or designed in sections for a more dynamic effect.
Choosing Your Fabric and Colour
Fabric selection is where the real personalisation happens, and it is often the decision that people find most enjoyable — and most overwhelming. Here are the key considerations to guide your choice.
Texture
Texture adds visual and tactile richness. Velvet is one of the most popular choices for upholstered headboards: it is soft to touch, photographs beautifully, and creates a sense of warmth and luxury in almost any bedroom. Boucle (the looped, slightly nubby fabric that has become a design staple in recent years) offers a more casual, tactile warmth. Linen and linen-look fabrics are clean, breathable, and unpretentious — ideal for relaxed or coastal aesthetics.
Colour
The headboard does not need to match your bedding — in fact, the most interesting bedrooms often feature some contrast. Consider the existing tones in your room: the flooring, the wall colour, the timber or metal finish of any other furniture. The headboard can either complement those tones (staying within the same temperature range) or provide a considered contrast (a dark fabric against a light wall, or a warm tone against a cool grey).
Neutral tones — stone, sand, warm grey, soft white, charcoal — are the safest long-term choice because they are easy to accessorise around. But a confident deep green, navy, rust, or blush headboard can become the defining feature of a beautiful bedroom. The key is committing to a direction rather than defaulting to the safest option out of uncertainty.
Durability and Practicality
If you have young children or pets, consider a performance fabric that is designed to resist staining and is easy to wipe down. Microfibre and many modern velvet-look fabrics perform well in family environments without sacrificing the aesthetic you are aiming for.
At our Papakura showroom, we keep an extensive range of fabric swatches available for you to take home and try against your existing bedroom colours and bedding before committing to a final selection. We strongly recommend this step — seeing a swatch in your own room, in your own light, makes all the difference.
Headboard Sizing Guide
Getting the scale right is critical. A headboard that is too small for the bed will look tentative and out of proportion. One that is excessively tall for the room can feel imposing rather than elegant.
Width
As a general rule, your headboard should be the same width as your bed base or mattress, plus a small amount on each side (typically 5–10 cm per side). This gives a finished, intentional look without the headboard appearing to overwhelm the bed. For a wall-mounted floating headboard, you have more flexibility and can extend the width significantly to create a more dramatic effect.
Height
Standard headboard heights range from around 90 cm to 140 cm above the floor (or 50–100 cm above the mattress top). A good starting point is to ensure the headboard extends at least 50 cm above your pillow line. For rooms with high ceilings, taller headboards — up to 150 cm or beyond — can look exceptional and make full use of the vertical space available.
As a reference guide:
- Low/standard ceiling (2.4 m): Aim for a headboard height of 100–120 cm from the floor.
- Medium ceiling (2.6–2.8 m): Heights of 120–140 cm work well.
- High ceiling (3 m+): Consider going tall — 150 cm and above can look outstanding and fill the space proportionally.
If you are unsure, we are happy to advise based on your specific room dimensions when you visit our showroom or contact us directly.
The Best Beds Custom Headboard Process
We have designed our custom headboard process to be straightforward and enjoyable — not a logistical headache. Here is how it works from start to finish.
Step 1: Initial Consultation
The process begins with a conversation — either in our Papakura showroom or by phone. We will ask about your bedroom dimensions, your bed size, your existing furniture and colour palette, and the style direction you have in mind. If you have images saved from magazines or Pinterest, bring them along — they are extremely helpful in establishing a shared starting point.
Step 2: Fabric Selection
We will guide you through our fabric range, which covers a wide variety of colours, textures, and performance grades. You are welcome to take fabric swatches home to assess in your own lighting before making a final decision. This step is important — fabric colours can shift significantly between showroom lighting and the natural light in your bedroom.
Step 3: Design and Specification
Once the style, fabric, and dimensions are confirmed, we finalise the design specification. This includes the exact width and height of the headboard, the depth of padding, the button placement (if applicable), the leg or wall-mount configuration, and any other details specific to your design.
Step 4: Manufacturing
Your headboard is built by hand in our Papakura workshop using a solid NZ Pine timber frame, high-density foam padding, and your chosen upholstery fabric. Because we manufacture everything ourselves, we maintain full control over quality at every stage — and we are not dependent on offshore lead times or third-party suppliers.
Step 5: Delivery and Installation
We will arrange delivery to your home. Wall-mounted headboards come with clear installation guidance, and our team is happy to advise on the best fixing approach for your wall type. The result is a finished piece that fits your bedroom exactly as intended — because it was designed specifically for it.
Pairing Your Headboard with the Right Bed Frame and Bedroom Suite
A custom headboard is a natural starting point for a broader bedroom refresh. If your bed frame is old, mismatched, or simply no longer suits your taste, this is the ideal time to address the full picture.
Our range of bed frames is designed to complement our headboards, and many of our bedroom suites can be configured with a custom headboard as part of a complete package. Having the headboard and frame designed together ensures perfect proportional harmony and eliminates the guesswork of trying to match pieces from different sources.
We also manufacture lounge suites using the same upholstery fabrics and techniques, which means that if you want a cohesive fabric story across your bedroom and living spaces, we can make that happen.
Visit Our Showroom in Papakura
Custom furniture decisions are best made in person, where you can feel fabric samples, see scale and proportion in a physical space, and have a genuine conversation with someone who knows the product inside out.
Our showroom in Papakura is open seven days a week, and we welcome visitors with no appointment necessary. Bring your room measurements, any inspiration images you have, and an open mind — our team will handle the rest.
Explore our custom headboard range online to get a sense of our style options and fabric palette before you visit.
Best Beds & Furniture23 O'Shannessey Street, Papakura, Auckland 2110
Phone: 09-267 3266
Mon–Fri: 9am – 5:30pm | Sat–Sun: 10am – 4pm
We offer interest-free finance options and accept WINZ quotes, making a custom bedroom achievable at any stage of life.
Your Bedroom, Made for You
A custom headboard is not an indulgence — it is an investment in a room you use every single day. When a bedroom is designed thoughtfully and made well, it becomes more than a place to sleep. It becomes a space that restores you.
At Best Beds & Furniture, we have been helping New Zealand families create bedrooms like that for years. Every headboard we build is made by hand, in our own workshop, from materials we stand behind. The difference is not just visible — it is something you feel every time you walk into your room.
We look forward to helping you design yours.
