It’s cold out there. In much of the country, now’s the time when home serves as a cozy refuge from the ice and snow. We light our fireplaces and wish for springtime.

But what if we took the opposite approach, using the inspiration of frosty winter colors and shimmering, icy textures to create rooms that look gorgeous year-round? A winter-inspired room can celebrate the beauty of this season, and also provide a cooling refuge perfect for the spring and summer ahead.

“My clients usually think I’ve lost my mind when I suggest using winter as a source of inspiration for a cozy bedroom,” says designer Brian Patrick Flynn, founder of decordemon.com. But, he says, “when done right, a combination of layered whites, blue-grays and touches of metallic can add a wintry look that’s chic, inviting, surprisingly warm and totally timeless.”

Here, Flynn and two other interior designers — Betsy Burnham of Los Angeles’ Burnham Design and Kyle Schuneman of Live Well Designs — offer advice on using winter as a decorating inspiration.

GET REFLECTIVE

Start with the reflective sheen of ice as your main inspiration, says Flynn. “Use a plethora of reflective surfaces and metallic touches,” he says, including mirrored accent tables and nightstands, as well as mirrored lamps.

Flynn and Schuneman both recommend metallic wallpaper. “One bedroom I designed in California was completely inspired by Candice Olsen’s birch bark wallpaper from York Wallcovering,” Flynn says.

“The paper is made from white-toned birch bark, and has a metallic backing which just screams ‘winter chic.'”

If you’d prefer painted walls, Schuneman suggests choosing a shade of pale gray or icy blue and buying it in two different finishes — one with a high sheen that almost looks metallic and the other matte. Paint the walls with alternating stripes of each finish.

This use of just a few metallic or mirrored items is a great way to bring in some icy glamour, Schuneman says, “without it becoming the ice princess’ dungeon.”

Mirrored and metallic items also maximize light, warming a room even in winter.

“Since trees lose their leaves in the winter, the amount of light that streams in through the window can be double the amount in the spring or summer,” Flynn says. “By the time that gorgeous light hits the reflective surfaces and metallics, the room instantly warms up.”

Burnham also likes mirrored items. A mirrored table “adds a dimension to a room that wood just doesn’t,” she says. But she cautions against taking the look too far. If you’re buying mirrored end tables, she says, put a ceramic lamp on top rather than a mirrored or glass lamp. Or mix mirrors and chrome with warm shades of ivory, rather than stark whites.

USE A RANGE OF COLORS

“The biggest trick to doing a wintry palette right is to layer, layer, layer,” Flynn says. “I like to stick with an overall white palette, but bring in ultra-white, off-white, cream, blue-white and then add touches of blue-gray. This makes a space soothing and sophisticated, while adding depth.”

Burnham’s favorite wintry wall color right now is a shade called “Silver Spoon” by Dunn-Edwards. “It’s a really, really pale gray-blue, and I cannot tell you how many rooms I’ve used it in,” she says. It contrasts well with white for a modern look or with warm shades of brown for a more “organic and earthy” feel.

Schuneman loves mixing wintry whites, silvers and grays accented with shades of purple. Or he sometimes pairs “a gray that has blue as its base, and a blue that has gray in its base” and brings in “hard edges, like crystal lamps” for a chic, “wintry feeling.”

WORK IT ANYWHERE

Winter-inspired design can work in any climate, from a Vermont ski house to a California beach condo.

“I did a bedroom in the Hollywood Hills with icy blue walls, and the headboard wall was all metal ceiling tiles,” Schuneman says. For the bedside tables, he chose pale blue glass lamps that resemble melting chunks of ice.

“You can really go for it” and do a full-on winter-inspired style, Schuneman says, or use just touches of it as “the thing that gives a room an edge.”

In southern California or other warm locations, Burnham says, it may work best to mix winter-inspired items with something more reminiscent of the local weather.

“Think of a beautiful driftwood table with something sparkly on it. That brings it back to the sand and the beach, and keeps it relatable” to your warm-weather location, but also includes a bit of icy beauty, she says.

BALANCE ICY WITH COZY

Along with shimmery, mirrored surfaces, be sure to include soft, cozy ones: Look for “beautiful cable-knit cashmere throws,” Burnham says, or “a big faux-fur coyote blanket on a bed. It’s wintry, but it’s also so luxe, so high-end hunting lodge, and that works at the beach, too.”

Layers of soft fabric on furniture and floors bring a welcome feeling of warmth. If you choose a “fluffy, white flokati rug for the floor, you’re still having a kind of wintry moment,” Schuneman says, “but it’s just not hard-edged.”

WHAT NOT TO DO

Just don’t get silly, Flynn says. “First and foremost, I let my client know that just because we’re going wintry, it doesn’t mean we’re going to pop out igloos, snowflakes and polar bears. In other words, we completely avoid themes and cliches altogether.”

Instead, he says, “we just think of different ways to use whites, grays, metallics and textures in a manner which fits their personal style and makes a room feel airy and open. That’s usually my trick to getting winter-inspired design right.”

Project Ripple, Ms. Kim’s garden at Jackson South Community Hospital in Miami, opened in August. “When we look for a place to call home and we nurture a garden we call our own, we are looking for a place that’s restorative, that’s regenerative and that has a kind of humanity,” she told a reporter last week on the phone from her office in Boston.

Q. How do you define a healing garden?

A. It allows for us to reboot. I think that a lot of our public environments don’t really offer us that.

Q. Certainly not in hospitals.

A. Overall, a kind of stress management happens. It’s something we all know intuitively. We go to a place that’s quiet and inviting, and we can just feel our body relaxing. I think at the highest level, hospital administrators are really beginning to believe that design matters and they’re infusing a kind of humanity into these clinical environments.

Q. So “clinical” is something to be avoided.

A. It’s an interesting word. We want our health-care professionals to be objective and not emotional in assessing our state of being. But at the same time there’s a growing awareness that clinical environments work against the good work that doctors do — that they may actually increase stress levels, not only in patients but in their families.

Q. Hospitals pose severe constraints to designers. What did you have to think about with a hospital garden?

A. There’s such a range of people who come to any hospital: there are people who are just there to get a vaccination and then there are kids who’ve had four transplants. We had to create a safe environment for kids with severe immune deficiencies.

The other aspect was daily engagement: the rituals of the patients. There’s a kind of layering of activity that took months to figure out how to do, such as allowing for patients who are learning to get back on their feet to do physical therapy using the garden. In the Miami garden, there’s a slight incline that allows people to have a little bit of a challenge as they do circuits and at the same time allows patients in wheelchairs to enjoy the same setting.

I remember one parent in Chicago said to me, “I have a young son, and my daughter is in the hospital. I just want to be able to sit in the garden on a bench and look up at the sky at night and breast-feed my child.”

Q. Can you say more about the designs?

A. Within each of the gardens there are contemplative rooms created through plant material that screens the space and water that screens sound. In Miami, we actually used mist to create a cooling element that is a microclimate in the center and also creates a private zone.

In Chicago, we have a series of sculptural play elements; some of them are benches. They were salvaged pieces of wood from around Chicago. These logs had all this rot in them. We wondered, Should we repair this, should we make it look new? I said no. The whole idea of healing is there’s often a scar that’s left behind. It’s almost the beauty of healing. It’s not pretending that something is perfect. All of the aging was captured with resin and then we punched holes in the wood and embedded speakers. Different water sounds come out of the logs.

Q. Your own career was derailed by a physical disability: You were heading toward a career as a concert pianist in your early 20s when you developed tendinitis. Do you naturally think of creativity as something connected to the body?

A. I think that the idea of vulnerability is something you constantly bump up against as you grow older, but when you’re younger it’s quite traumatic. You don’t have the tools to address it. I had to find another form of expression, which was public and performative, used the body and had a kind of creativity to it. 

A focal point is an important part of any garden room. Photos by Doug Oster

I spent four days in Florida with my family for a little break from the weather and I wish I was still there.

There was a long meandering trail along a lake near our hotel. A Great Blue Heron fished in the shallows along with other birds.

At the end of the walkway was a gazebo with a beautiful planter in the center.

It’s a great example of a garden focal point. It’s something that catches the eye and calls you to the space. Along the way, there’s always lots to see, but the focal point keeps calling.

It doesn’t have to be a gazebo or a planter, it might be a statue, tall plant or just about anything else.

Sometimes gardens can be created like rooms, at least that’s how I often look at them.

I like to put a focal point in each room. In one it’s a birdbath, another a tall pedestal with planter and another is a big statue.

This is a great time to look at those garden rooms when they are naked. Where’s the focal point in your gardens?

Have fun, look at gardens online and see how you can plan for the upcoming season.

Here’s one more picture from Florida, that balloon is quite a statement, quite a focal point.