How to Sleep with the Fishes

Check out this fun bedroom designed by surf room designer Dean Miller. The entire bedroom was designed around our Under the Sea comforter pattern. This fun textile arrangement was hand drawn by a local Hawaiian artist, who wanted to bring his love for the ocean to life, by drawing colorful tropical fish swimming around a coral reef in the glittering sun. Dean Miller decided to use this fabric to hand sew into comforters, and bring an underwater paradise to life in your bedroom.

We started with a pretty typical and bland bedroom, and immediately wanted to lighten the walls to bring out the rich blue deep sea look of the comforter. I found this great light sea foam looking wall paper that has these tonal coral reef patterns inset in the background. (Well at least they resembled coral reef to me!) The wall paper also brought in a bit of texture, and depth to the background instead of simply painting the walls. We wanted to focal point to be on the aquarium, and bedding. The furniture we used was the same as we had on hand, except for the boat type bookcase, which I love and keeps with our ocean theme, but not in a corny way. The biggest addition we made was building out the wall, and adding in a real aquarium with real tropical fish swimming around while you sleep. This part of our room makeover took a bit of planning, but turned out not to be as hard as it looks. The aquarium is pretty much flush with the wall, and is framed with some wood trim to give it a more designer finish. One of the wood trim panels is held in place by magnets, and can be flipped down so the the fish can be feed and cared for. The tank is pretty much self cleaning so there isn't really a need to go in and out of the fish tank. Putting the aquarium inset in the wall is similar to putting a flat screen television in your wall as well, same concept and tools are used. We hope this inspires you to bring some creativity into your interior design, and if you need some tropical themed decor or bedding, be sure to visit us at www.deanmillerprints.com Mahalo!