Wardrobe vanity area

A surprise inside!

I'm very lucky in that my bedroom in my rented flat has a huge amount of storage space with a whole wall of wardrobes. However, it must be admitted that they're not the most beautiful things in the world and having a wall of white cupboards is not all that inspiring.

Functional but not-so-attractive wardrobes

This being a rental, there's not much I can do about them, and even if I did own the place (unlikely to happen any time soon as a similar flat was recently sold for £849,000!) fitted wardrobes are difficult to remove and expensive to replace. Plus having three shelves for my shoes is great fun.

But my wardrobes had a secret. In the middle set of doors is a little vanity area, complete with drawer, mirror and plug for my hairdryer. I saw this as the perfect opportunity to decorate scrapbook-style like I used to at university, without spoiling the clean lines of my bedroom.

Of course not everyone will have one of these neat little compartments, but I still think that decorating the insides of your wardrobe doors is a lovely way to put up some photos and add a secret pop of colour. My photos always make me smile when I get dressed in the mornings.

If you feel you can spare a couple of shelves in your wardrobe, you could always try taking one out and putting an inexpensive mirror at the back for a makeshift dressing table.

I put up a mixture of snapshots of friends and family, postcards of artworks I like and book covers by Penguin, of which I bought a big set. In one of my student rooms at university, I used these Penguin postcards to create a tiled effect around a boarded-up fireplace.

Adding your own bits and bobs, including those things you use everyday like moisturiser and perfume in nice bottles, makes it feel like a personal space just for you. 

I store my make up brushes, along with spare pens and scissors, in this ceramic shopping bag pot from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Previously I've used jam jars (Marmite jars always look cool and retro) or anything else lying around, but it's handy having everything in one place.

I love printing off photos because I have a theory that one day Facebook will explode and then I won't be able to access all the nice photos of my friends and me because they're all taken by other people. I have boxes of them, and this is a nice way to show a few of them off!