Funkify your room

The ceiling fan provides another great outlet for your creativity – paint the blades in pretty colours (not too pretty, or you’ll find yourself staring at the fan all day, mesmerised by the spinning patterns!). Another great idea could be to glue small coins to pieces of coloured string and hang them from the centre of the fan. As the fan turns, the coins will knock against each other, and make pleasant wind-chime-like sounds. Of course, an authentic wind-chime is a very good alternative too.

70s Disco

This kind of room is just a short hop away from the 60s room, but a little more high-tech. The psychededelic wallpaper gives way to psychedelic posters, which are just as bright, but don’t scream LSD as loudly as wallpaper.

You can buy some great 70s stuff, like lava lamps and those neat crystal balls with arcs of static electricity inside them, from Heera Panna (expensive, but if you can get your hands on them, you’ll have the coolest room ever!).

Wind chimes are cool and you can paint them for added effect. If you’re bold enough and your parents are liberal enough, you might try and convert one wall of your room into a shrine to graffitti. Scrape the wall free of plaster till the brick is exposed. Then paint on a clear adhesive or a binder. (Go to your local hardware store and get the best stuff) When the binder has dried, you’re ready to begin scribing your wall. Look for good graffitti in likely places, and always go armed with a paper and pencil to note down the good ones. You can use crayons or chalk to write the graffitti, but spray paint is waaaaay cooler, if you can afford it…

80s Funk

This kind of room does away with psychedelia entirely — meant for all you yuppie types, there’s not much to be said about this one. A few movie posters, maybe some interesting wood furniture (try Chor Bazaar or those neat shops near Mohammedali Road) would help the effect.

Paintings and etchings would be a great help. Make sure you place them where there’s sufficient light. Other cool stuff you can put in would include a metronome (that thing musicians use to get their timing right — it looks like an inverted pendulum and makes a very soothing ticking noise), a wind chime, a Stop-sign and some nice breezy curtains.

90s Techie

This room relies heavily on the Star Trek/Wars themes. Starfield wallpaper and a light pastel-shade carpet/rug would look nice. Try and paint the ceiling to look like a night sky, with lots of bright stars.

Another great idea might be to redecorate your bed to look like something from the future. You can tack on metallic panels to the sides of the bed, paint false buttons on the headrest, basically change the whole damn thing.

Your door can be altered to slide open rather than be pulled or pushed open, and you can paint it in some nice futuristic colour schemes.

Go with chrome and metallic furniture. Deep colours for scushions and upholstery would look nice too. Try and incorporate subdued lighting, so that you get that eerie starship feel.

GENERAL TIPS

* Always put up posters of your favourite movies — that tells a visitor a lot about you

* Try and avoid tubelights as much as possible. Lightbulbs may cost more, but they’re a lot warmer and not as impersonal and sterile as tubelights

* If you have a CD/tape player or a computer, try and get dust-covers which match the decor of your room. The same goes for the counter-panes on the bed

* Nothing goes down as well as personal touches. Write on the walls, the doors, hang up posters of famous people you like — go crazy — it’s YOUR room, make sure everyone gets that message

Also make sure you realise that you can never get a room to fit entirely into one category or another. In fact, don’t even try to stick rigidly to one look. Experiment with different ideas before you embark on a course of action. You should try and draw what you want your room to look like before doing anything, although sometimes a mental picture may be enough.

And most of all, before you touch anything, GET PARENTAL CONSENT!!!