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Are you one of those people who clean the house just before the cleaning lady shows up? The affliction is surprisingly common. What is at work here? Nothing but simple fear: When friends and strangers look upon our homes, we know they are really looking upon us.

For interior designers, this peril is sharpened. Our homes are not only a reflection of us personally, but also a measure of our professional competence. Scrutiny is, to say the least, worrying, and it's the main reason only my closest friends have been invited to my humble apartment in recent years. The space's mishmash of one-off furnishings has become known as “Kelly's scratch and dent sale.”

I decided that 2009 will be the year of change – 12 months to transform my neglected abode into a stylish rental apartment that would no longer be a source of professional and personal anxiety.

My bedroom was first. The 13-by-14-foot room was dark and worn. The mocha-coloured paint I'd slapped on the walls years ago was dull and chipped, and the ceiling was as grey as an ashtray.

I'd installed a new chandelier, but the room still had little light: I always kept the cheap plastic blinds drawn to give me privacy from the neighbours. But while the blinds where enough to keep the room from feeling bright, they weren't enough to keep out the bleed from the neighbour's security light. To prevent the light's waking me up at 3 a.m., which it often did, I'd taken to pinning up a grey sheet over the window. One step better than using tinfoil, perhaps, but you can understand my reluctance to have visitors.

In the bedroom, the furnishings were, to put it charitably, eclectic. In their previous life, my bedside tables were the drawer towers to an art deco vanity – rescues from a roadside sale a few summers ago. My armoire was a hand-me-down from a friend, and beside it stood my most shameful design items: two rolling plastic drawer towers. Convenient as storage for bracelets, earrings and the like? Yes. Stylish? No.

In a perfect world I'd have started from scratch and created a spare, modern bedroom decked out with the best in Italian furniture. But like many others in 2009, I'm on a budget, and most of the furnishings had to stay. I wanted my bedroom to be light, elegant and glam with an overriding feeling of unfussy femininity.

Paint came first. Over the dingy ceilings went a coat of warm, matte white, and a natural linen hue on the walls. It was fresher, but it didn't have much flavour. This I left up to the wallpaper. When out at a vendor, I'd fallen in love with a Moorish-inspired pattern that reminds me of Casablanca. The gold of the paper's background complements the warm undertones of my linen headboard and the golden oak floors; the white pattern has in it a feminine curve that relates well to the shapes of the chandelier.

Part of me would have loved to put the paper everywhere, but I had to practise restraint: On all four walls, the pattern would have been too repetitive and energetic for a bedroom. I decided to cover one wall – the backdrop for the focal point in any bedroom, the bed.

Here I wanted luxury without airs. Rather than satins and velvets, I chose modest layers of ivory cotton and gold silk. I avoided pattern save for the intricately embroidered bolster – anything bolder would have competed with the wallpaper and disturbed the quiet elegance of the room.

The same would have been true of fancifully carved or mirrored bedside tables. Instead, I went with two dressers from Ikea. They're the epitome of simple, and their clean, white lines create a pleasing light plane that makes the room seem wider while providing lots of surface area for my treasured glass lamps.

At the foot of the bed, I wanted a touch of decoration to offset the simplicity of the bed. I needed a furnishing that I could throw my clothes over in a hurry, something to sit on when pulling on shoes. I decided on an ivory bench – another reference to the glam Hollywood boudoirs of the 1940s.

A decent chunk of the budget went to this bench, and most of what remained went to the custom draperies that Ravi, my soft furnishing guru, created for me. For the window, he fashioned a stationary poly-cotton screen: As sunlight passes through it, a diffuse glow is cast into the room, giving me both light and privacy. He made another blind from white linen and lined with blackout material. I retract it by day to allow the light in and draw it by night to shut out the infernal security light next door.

The bedroom is done, and I feel joyful about it. After everything was fixed up, I realized that I felt it easier to breathe in the space. I hadn't noticed that my breath was constricted before, but it must have been. And breathing easier is always a good thing.

*****

Where to buy it

Dressers – Ikea, www.ikea.caGold shams, embroidered cushion, window treatments and closet drapery – Ravi Design Co., ravidesign.ca or 604-275-0511Lamps, bench, bedding and accessories – The Cross Decor & Design, thecrossdesign.com or 604-689-2900Paint – Benjamin Moore (natural linen CC-90), benjaminmoore.caWallpaper – Crown Wallpaper & Fabrics, crownwallpaper.com or 604-736-4541