The Designer's Crime I Said I'd Never Commit

Let me confess something.

I have a TV in my bedroom.

I know. I know. Take a moment. Collect yourself. I'll wait.

For years I was firmly, loudly, unapologetically in the no-TV-in-the-bedroom camp. It's a sanctuary, I said. It's a place for rest, I said. A big black rectangle on the wall kills the whole mood, I said — and not just the aesthetic mood, if you know what I mean. 😉

And then winter came for me.

What broke me.

I have Hashimoto's and fibromyalgia, which means cold is not just uncomfortable for me — it's genuinely painful. Night after night through the depths of winter I was sitting up in the living room, frozen to the bone, watching Sweet Magnolias for what I can only describe as the one thousandth time, because leaving the warmth of my bed to go and sit on the couch in the cold was apparently something I was willing to do repeatedly rather than simply put a TV in the bedroom.

We run ducted air conditioning, but here's the problem with that: if I run it late into the night, my son's room and the guest room turn into ovens while the rest of the house reaches a perfectly lovely temperature. So once my son goes to bed, the heater goes off. I am not in the business of slow-roasting my child while I watch Julie and Julia for the thousandth time. That would be a different kind of crime entirely.

After about two weeks of sitting there freezing in the dark, I'd had enough. I packed up my husband, informed him we were going to JB Hi-Fi, and made it very clear we were not leaving without a television. He is a good man and he understood the assignment.

The hunt for the right one.

Here's where the decorator in me couldn't fully switch off — even in my frozen, determined state. I did not want a huge TV. I did not want a big, cold, black rectangle dominating the room I had already had an overwhelm about. You might remember — that's the room where I sat on the floor and cried for five minutes before I could even start to think about how to make it feel like a sanctuary. I was not about to undo all of that work with an oversized screen.

I knew exactly what I was looking for. And I found it — a 32 inch TCL smart TV. Just big enough to watch comfortably from bed. Small enough to sit on my temporary dresser without taking over the room. And when my proper dresser eventually makes it back in there, there'll still be room on top for the things that actually belong on a dresser.

It is not the hero of the room. It knows its place. And I love it.

Do I regret it?

Not even slightly.

There is something deeply, quietly wonderful about climbing into bed after a long day — warm, comfortable, in the room I fought hard to make feel like a retreat — and watching something I know with absolute certainty my husband has zero interest in watching, no matter how much he loves me. 😄

Some nights it's Meryl Streep in France, cooking up a storm in her little Paris kitchen and making me want to move there immediately. Some nights it's whatever episode of Sweet Magnolias I'm up to — yes, still. Other nights I don't touch the TV at all. I reach for what is fast becoming the best interior decorating book of my life — but that's a story for another day. 😉 And some nights I simply crawl into bed, say a prayer, and fall asleep before I've even decided what I want to watch.

Two or three nights a week, maybe. That's all. The rest of the time it just sits there quietly, not dominating anything, not ruining the mood, not committing any crimes whatsoever.

Break the damn rules.

There are plenty of designers who will tell you a TV in the bedroom is a cardinal sin. And I understand the reasoning — I've said it myself. But I think the real crime isn't the television. It's letting it take over. It's making it the focal point, the first thing you see, the thing the whole room is arranged around.

A TV that knows its place? That earns its spot by making your life genuinely better and more comfortable? That lets you watch Meryl Streep in France from the warmth of your own bed on a freezing winter night without turning your son into a roast chook?

That's not a crime. That's good sense.

You only live once. And life is too short to sit frozen on the couch at midnight watching Julie and Julia alone when you could be watching it in bed. 🤍