Cheerful glamour: Blue + green guest bedroom by Jamie Drake

Cheerful glamour: Blue + green guest bedroom by Jamie Drake, originally uploaded by xJavierx.

Cheerful glamour: Blue + green guest bedroom by Jamie Drake

In the guest bedroom of a New York apartment, interior designer Jamie Drake used a color he calls Prussian blue -- it's a handwoven yarn-dyed raffia from Holly Hunt. The Avery Boardman twin bed is upholstered in two Bergamo prints: Hyde Park for the seat and Rosegarten for the cushions. The throw pillows are in Schumacher's Zenyatta Mondatta. The George Smith Norris Chair is in Palmarola by Pierre Frey, the walnut-and-brass end tables from Buck House.

Drake's advice about ceilings? Paint them. "Color makes a ceiling seem higher. It lifts your eye and takes the lid off the box. I tend to like ceilings on the light side — light, subtle, and flat. The living room's is painted taffy, a kind of golden beige. The master bedroom's is the pink of a lady's slipper orchid." The only time not to paint a ceiling, he says, is when "there's beautiful plasterwork. Color would only detract."

Photo by Lucas Allen, House Beautiful, March 2008.