How do you turn your bed-sitter into a cosy, welcoming den, with a seductive hint to it, so that a friend would love to come back with you after an evening out on the town? 19 asked Barbara Hulanicki of Biba for her expert advice on this and here are some of her easily imitated ideas to jazz up your pad.

Choice of colour schemes is very much a question of taste, but we chose Biba’s beautiful brown and gold paper and brown paint because they’re warm and intimate to live with and neutral enough to display favourite bits and pieces. Brown floor felt is a cheap alternative to carpet, but it is difficult to keep clean. If you can stand doing it, sanding tt-e floor gives a beautiful surface. pywood pieces, cut to size by your frendly local do-it-yourself shop and glued or nailed together, form excellent boxes for tables and seats. If yoire clever with a screwdriver, you night even manage to hinge one side and use the boxes for storage.

Painted and edged with wallpaper border and then varnished with clear polyurethane. they make effective and decorative furniture, which will tie in beautifully with your room scheme. An alternative to expensive antique plant pots is to buy terracotta ones and again paint with colour and seal with clear polyurethane.

A pegboard livens up a dull wall and when painted and bordered with paper looks as if it’s meant to be there. Half-inch thick insulating board—again cut to required size— is super stuff for pinning notices on.

The bed is covered in brown velvet and scatter cushions. Everyone knows it’s a bed, but it doesn’t have to look like one and this way successfully forms an integral part of the room. An ugly wardrobe can dominate a bed-sitter, but is usually a necessary evil. Given the same treatment —paint, wallpaper trim — it actually looks pleasant and merges effectively with the wall.

Judging by the jumble of sticks and pots in most girls’ bedrooms, storage space for jewellery and make-up is also a problem. Barbara’s cheap, chic and neat answer to this is a tin tool-box, stocked by most hardware shops. Painted and varnished, it looks really effective.

Text by Gwenda Saar.

All items from Biba, unless otherwise stated. Model’s clothes from Biba.

Photographs by Manfred Vogelsanger.

Scanned from 19 Magazine, February 1973.