Credit: Photography: Armelle Habib / Instagram
If you have recently found yourself being reprimanded by home and hosting expert Loui Burke online about the state of your pillows, you are not alone. Loui has been trying to teach us how to style a bed for some time. It just so happens that lately, the rest of the world has started paying attention.
The Australian creative director, design educator and home and hosting expert has built an enormous online following dispensing practical interiors advice, which is practical, specific, and delivered with the energy of a friend who has walked into your bedroom, taken one look around and decided an intervention is necessary.
His “fed-up” bed-making videos have travelled particularly far. After several went viral, Loui revealed his Instagram following doubled in a single week as the internet began debating pillows, quilts, and bed-making.
The biggest offender? Your pillows. Because according to Loui, many of us have been approaching our beds all wrong.
“The number-one mistake is treating the bed like a table and lining every pillow upright across it,” he tells Home Beautiful. “Stack the sleeping pillows flat, then use the decorative pillows.”
Behind the humour, though, is a genuinely useful philosophy for creating a beautiful bedroom: use fewer things, make the things you do use work harder and pay attention to proportion, layering and presentation.
So, we asked Loui to settle it once and for all: how to style a bed properly, which bedding habits he’d happily leave behind in 2026 and the surprisingly simple tricks that can make even inexpensive linen look more luxurious.
Your bed is not a table
Stop standing all of your pillows upright in a neat little row across the head of the bed. Instead, the pillows you actually sleep on should be stacked flat. Decorative pillows can then be used to introduce height and shape in front.
And while social media may have convinced us that a luxurious bed requires approximately 47 cushions, Loui is advocating restraint. For a queen or king bed, his formula is simple: four sleeping pillows, two European pillows and one long lumbar cushion.
“You need far fewer than people think,” he says. “Once you need a diagram to remember where everything goes at night, it has become ridiculous.”
How to style a bed, according to Loui Burke
It turns out a beautifully made bed is less about throwing a collection of expensive cushions at it and more about getting the foundations right.
Loui starts with a mattress protector and, if required, a mattress topper, followed by a fitted sheet and top sheet. And yes, top-sheet haters, he’s using one.
He brings the top sheet all the way to the head of the bed before positioning the duvet approximately 30 centimetres lower. This leaves enough sheet to fold neatly over the top of the duvet, creating a crisp cuff.
Next, the upper section of the duvet is folded back with a coverlet layered beneath the fold. Sleeping pillows are stacked rather than propped, followed by two European pillows and one lumbar.
Then comes a step many of us conveniently pretend doesn’t exist: steam it.
Loui steams the visible bedding once the bed is made, taking it from “I changed the sheets” to the sort of bed that makes you briefly believe you bedroom has room service.
The expensive-looking bed trick that isn’t actually expensive
Good news: according to Loui, achieving a more luxurious-looking bed doesn’t necessarily require luxury-priced sheets.
“Scale and presentation do more than price,” he says.
One of his favourite tricks is using a duvet one size larger than the mattress. The extra fabric creates a more generous drape down either side of the bed, rather than leaving the duvet looking as though it’s clinging for dear life.
A properly filled duvet matters, too, as do pillow protectors, which help pillows retain their shape.
Then keep the palette relatively tonal, pay attention to the way everything sits and–he isn’t budging on this–get the steamer out again. “Those details make inexpensive linen look far more elevated,” says Loui.
Your bedding doesn’t need replacing, just better PR.
A beautiful bed should still look sleepable
There is a fine line between “beautifully layered bed” and “installation at a decorative arts museum that must not be touched”.
Loui wants us on the former side. “Keep the structure considered but not rigid,” he says. “A turned-back duvet, a visible coverlet and natural linen or cotton give you layers without making the bed feel untouchable.”
The goal isn’t perfection.
“I want a bed to look finished, but still like you’re allowed to get into it.”
What’s out for bedding in 2026?
If you’re wondering how to style a bed that feels current in 2026, Loui’s advice is less about buying into a particular aesthetic and more about knowing when to stop.
First on the chopping block is, well, the chop.
“I’m ready to see excessive cushions disappear, along with the aggressive cushion chop,” says Louie.
Also facing eviction: “shiny polyester bedding and decorative pillows that serve no purpose being moved twice a day.”
Instead, Loui sees bedrooms moving towards something more personal and less obviously dictated by a trend cycles. “A current bedroom in 2026 feels personal rather than trend-saturated,” he says. “Start with good natural materials and a restrained base, then bring in colour, pattern or vintage pieces in ways that can evolve.”
It’s a refreshingly anti-haul approach to decorating. You don’t need to replace your entire bedroom because the internet has decided one colour is over and another is in. In fact, doing exactly that may be what makes a room date faster. “A bedroom shouldn’t date-stamp itself because every surface is following the same trends,” he says.
Listen to Loui Burke on The Edit podcast:
Loui Burke’s final rule for making a bed
After discussing layers, duvet sizes, pillow configurations, natural fibres, coverlets and the merits of a steamer, we asked Loui to reduce his considerable bed-making wisdom to one command.
He did not disappoint.
“Your bed is not a table. Stop lining the pillows up like they’re waiting for a meeting.”
And really, that may be all you need to remember. So tomorrow morning, when you’re standing at the foot of the bed wondering how to style a bed that would pass Loui Burke’s inspection, start by laying down the sleeping pillows. Then step away from the cushion chop.
Your fed-up friend in home and hosting will be proud.
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