The bedroom set - the bed, two identical nightstands, maybe a chest of drawers from the same range - was the safest way not to get it wrong. And that is exactly why it is now disappearing. Designers this year say that mixing materials, shapes and heights delivers far more than repeating the same model twice.

The starting point is almost always the same: the headboard is chosen first, and the doubts begin when it is the nightstands' turn. Repeat the same wood? Bring in a different material? Go for contrast or for continuity? There is a fourth option that is becoming increasingly common - replacing one nightstand with a chest of drawers, if the space or the storage need calls for it.

There is no universal rule. The link between headboard and nightstands can be built through material, through proportion, through shape or even through the height of the pieces. What matters is not that they look like they came from the same collection, but that they work together and the result feels balanced.

When the nightstand is the main event

One solution is to keep the dramatic effect entirely for the nightstand - the headboard stays calm and neutral, and next to it stands a piece with a pronounced form. Designer Bieke Casteleyn and her „Out of Line” model go exactly in that direction. The logic is simple: if everything is interesting, nothing is.

The opposite approach does the same thing through material rather than shape. Natural fibres and wood together - rattan, straw, walnut - create a link that does not require the pieces to match. Interior designer Alberto Torres uses that combination, and it works in a sixty square metre flat as well as in a house.

When there is no headboard at all

There is also a version where the bed goes without a headboard and the whole stage belongs to the nightstand. That solution takes nerve, because a headboard usually hides all the imprecision of the wall behind it - but when it works, the room looks lighter than it is.

Between those extremes lies a whole spectrum: dark furniture holding the room together, latticework details combined with wood, a nod to the seventies through rounded forms, wrought iron with wood, or an open mix of styles that looks collected over years. The last is the hardest to pull off deliberately and the loveliest when it works.

Why this is good news for our flats

The end of the set is not only an aesthetic trend. Here the set was a solution born of necessity - one purchase, one delivery, a finished room. Mixing means the nightstand inherited from a grandmother does not have to be thrown out to make room for a new bed, and that finding one good piece in a sale does not oblige you to hunt down its twin.

That is the difference between a room that was bought and a room that was assembled. The second usually costs less and almost always looks more interesting.