Every item on this page is carefully selected by the editor of House Beautiful. We may earn commissions on certain goods you choose to purchase.

The decoration legend shared rare details in the 1984 story.

This year marks the 125th anniversary of House Beautiful, and we dug out some of our favorite spaces from our archives-including decorator Sister Parish’s New York apartment and West Hollywood’s home and designer Tony Duquette’s studio, known as As the "magician's house". "Here, we revisit Mario Buatta's interview on how to design a timeless bedroom, which was first published in the August 1984 issue.

Designing a timeless bedroom is more than just filling it with beautiful things. First, you need to consider the bones of the room. The legendary interior designer Mario Buatta knew this well, and he proved it in the bedroom of the Kips Bay showroom in 1984. Not only that, he also shared the ins and outs of designing an eternal oasis with House Beautiful-from the way he approached the room for the first time to the history behind some of the accessories he put in.

"It was this room that earned Mario the nickname of the infamous "Cinque Prince". The journalist Chauncey Howell visited the 1984 model room," Emily Eerdmans-Design Experts, writers and Buatta students-tell House Beautiful. "The details of this interview are very rare. Mario doesn't often share such detailed information about his process."

Among the many suggestions that Buatta gave, she was most impressed by his emphasis on the importance of working with existing buildings and solving the missing shell of the room—even before adding a stroke of paint. "Mario is famous for his colors, curtains and collections, but what is often forgotten is his understanding of how to make the room work and even the skirting board," she explained. "All the great designers I have studied, even Madeleine Castane, who has no training at all, understand this."

Relive the original story below.

For a decorator like Mario Buatta, the designer showroom (usually a fundraising event) provides the ideal client: himself. "I like these projects because they provide complete freedom. No one can stop me," said Mr. Buata, who recently poured a lot of money into this room of the Kipps Bay Boys Club Performance Hall held in New York every year. attention. For the public, the model house is an endless source of creativity-a place to watch, learn, and see what you can borrow or remodel for yourself and your home.

Romantic and exquisite, luxury is beyond description-this is the bedroom of the moment, carefully crafted by a top decorator.

How is the eternal bedroom formed? Here, Mario Buatta answered our question.

How to deal with rooms based on priority? Where do you start?

First of all, how will the room be used? What do you want it to look like? The second is mood-how do you want it to feel? (Here, I start to feel the lightness and brightness of the English country house.) Then you can get the shape of the shell. You can make any changes to the shape of windows, doors, cornices and skirting.

Does your mood determine how you will complete the shell? Or are you guided by the original architecture of the room?

I think a room should be treated with its original architectural style, but you can elaborate on it...I hope this bedroom has the feel of a Georgian townhouse. I started with molds and mantels.

Why create a trompe l'oeil tape?

If this is a real Georgian townhouse, it will have a suitable cornice shape. But these are very simple, without any details. Instead of replacing them, I think it would be more beautiful to paint the fascia board and add some original appearance. Robert Jackson drew it based on my suggestion. The design has circles, diamonds and shadows. You can also use wallpaper borders to achieve this look.

Is there a fireplace in the room?

There is an old Victorian fireplace, but the opening is small and not very attractive. I think the room needs a mantel with a mirror on it, and the ideal mantel should be English-tall and open. This mantel is a Chippendale from the 18th century. In order to make the opening look bigger, I asked Robert Jackson to paint with trompe l'oeil bricks and marbles.

What is the next step in preparing the room enclosure?

wall. I always start by choosing important fabrics because it rules the room. I don't like to be dominated by a painting or a carpet. In this case, curtain fabric is the first. It is one of my favorites. I like borders-a timeless design, Château de Verrieres from Brunschwig & Fils.

Next I think what color I want to use. I have always used this fabric with light blue or white walls, so I decided to change it with lavender. We were going to glaze the walls, but I wanted something more special, so I asked my painter to paint four-inch wide mottles and stripes to make the walls feel like old faded silk. The pattern also gives the depth of the walls and the height of the ceiling. (You can use striped wallpaper to achieve a similar effect.) If you plan to paint like this, it is important to prepare the wall so that it is correct. A correctly finished glazed finish can last for several years.

The ceiling is the sixth surface that everyone forgets. I made it with pale robin egg blue. The finish is flat. In the bedroom, you want everything to be soft and comfortable-shiny finishes will reflect too much light in the bedroom.

I always paint them with a layer of color to make the room look taller. To complete the look here and make the room "down", we marbled the skirting board to match the fireplace surround.

When did you decide where to put the furniture?

After choosing the most important fabric or wall color or whatever you plan to use, you decide on the placement of the upholstery... The moment I walk into the room and know what it will be used for, I exactly Know where the furniture will be placed.

What do you want to accomplish in this bedroom?

I want the comfort of the 19th century... to have something truly comfortable... to have that comfortable luxury.

What is the starting point?

The bed comes first. As soon as I saw the room, I thought it needed a canopy bed because the room was too big (about 20 x 20 feet) and I wanted to make it comfortable. An ordinary bed looks like it is in the desert.

How do you choose treatment?

The idea is to have a canopy bed, this kind of room should have, but it should be done in a simple way. I decided to use a draped bed with a tester top and curtains because I think the room can use weight. The frame is wood suspended from the ceiling by chains. To make the room look bright and airy, I used a plain, lightweight striped handkerchief linen-the design is subtle, like chalk stripes-with lace-like cotton ring fringe trim. The sunburst processing inside the tester is more beautiful.

What about the rest of the bed?

The headboard is Venetian, somewhat 18th-century style, but upholstered-for comfort. The bed skirt matches the headboard. This bed is reminiscent of a bed I saw at Nancy Lancaster's Haseley Court in England.

Let's talk about accessories.

Well, I hate the word accessories. They are objects, things you like, things you like to coexist with, things that are important to you. I always like a room that looks as if it has been accumulated over the years. I think this is the advantage of the English house: I have lived there for several generations. The person who may own this particular room in the United States may have inherited many of these things. They are just the kind of things that people like to live.

Why are they important to the room?

Because they are things that are meaningful to you—the gifts you receive have been a commonplace meal over the years. This room is a bit like a scrapbook of women’s lives. This is her bedroom, the most private part of the house you can stay in.

If this is a real room, all these items belong to the client, or will you contribute some?

it depends. Some clients have nothing to bring at work; you have to find something for them. The best customer is the one who owns all these things, it is best to hide in the attic, and then you go there to take all these treasures. They make the house look very personal.

What controls the placement of wall objects?

Each height should not only be pleasing, but it should also balance the opposite heights. In other words, if you are looking at the window wall, the opposite wall should be balanced-you need the same height. By using boards and brackets, window frames and bows to balance the four walls, you will get a wonderful, even feeling throughout the room.

In other words, this is a way you can't be stingy-is this what you mean?

You must do it the right way, or not at all. The problem is that you can do this for very little money-people have already done this because you can go to second-hand stores to buy good things. You don't have to be of good quality; in such a room, you don't need to be of good quality. Yes, you need some qualities to give it the "charm" of this room-this room is full of quality works-but you can deceive a lot with this appearance. This is the style you must master.

Speaking of style, one of the most spectacular things in this room is the curtain treatment.

The curtains are very delicate. They are lined with black fabric and then lined with a blanket fabric that is nearly a quarter of an inch thick. They are lined with small fancy prints on the back, which will be great to see when you draw the curtains. Or, when you are outside, you will see a beautiful colored lining through it.

How would you describe the extraordinary potency and details of the work?

Valence plates are D-shaped, and they not only rise and bend in the air, but also arch outward—they are three-dimensional in all respects. The bezel fabric on the top has been reversed to make the crown. The beauty of it is that by using a border, then using a rope between it and the pleated drapery, and using such long jabots at the end, you will get this wonderful sense of architecture, which is very important.

A very interesting detail is the fan-shaped frame, which has pink edges.

I like that. Pink creates a soft look and is also a very simple and casual look. I think this is not the point. If you sew it down and make a reverse scallop like the edge of a chair, where you need sturdiness, then you will have curtains with hard edges. This is a very soft look, like feathered edges, very luxurious.

Is there a way to calculate the appropriate length of this kind of curtain?

They are four inches on the floor; for most customers, I make two inches on the floor. But most Americans are accustomed to curtains that will wipe the floor or an inch or two from the floor-it looks like they have just experienced a flood, which drives me crazy. Many people don't understand curtains-they don't realize that they become the building of the room. There are small cafe-style curtains behind them to prevent passersby from looking inside, but you can still see the light from above.

How are the borders of chairs and sofa skirts made?

You are looking at simple decorative edges. They are handed in and sewn, because if they keep being hit by the vacuum cleaner, they won't last long.

What is the history of the screen?

This is a French canvas from the 18th century. I discovered it about 12 years ago. What you see is the reverse side of the screen; the other side is too busy. The screen in the bedroom is always good because it creates an area that you can go back and change. Its role in that corner is to prevent the eyes from moving forward and create a more comfortable corner.

This is Queen Anne black paint from the 18th century. It is used as a dressing table at the bottom and a desk at the top. Behind the door is the storage room or display area. This particular one has a display.

You have a great painted chair.

I am obsessed with peeling paint. It has a sense of history, a sense of patina, and a sense of mystery. In fact, it is peeling off — what John Fowler calls "pleasing decay" — what makes the room look as if it has been inhabited, comfortable and loved. The piece on the dressing table is an 18th century Adam chat, painted and decorated.

Why did you choose this carpet?

The whole idea of ​​that little pattern is a bit like something from the 19th century, a backward idea. I like to use patterns in patterns. The point is to use interconnected patterns, just like in nature.

What happens in this case is that you have a large pattern, flowers of blue and white fabric; you have a ribbon pattern, which is scaled down; you have small dots, which complement the background; these small circles The dots are repeated in a diamond-shaped design on the carpet. Little by little, all these models are working.

When you make patterns on patterns, you must be aware of what you are doing. You have to look at it like an artist paints. You have to consider the combination. When you are making a room, the most important thing-I always like to decorate the room in the way an artist paints-is a tap. A room like this can be renovated in six months, but it shouldn’t look that way. It should appear to have "happened"-I call it the undecorated appearance.

It seems that your overall shape is much larger than the sum of the parts.

This is the intention. Sometimes customers want to stop at a certain point-they say they have had enough, or this is what they want. They didn't realize that you had to go a step further to make it look as comfortable as this room. A client walked in and said, "I understand why I need more things in my room." I said, "It's - you haven't finished the look yet." It's like commissioning an artist to paint a picture. Say "Stop, I'll paint" when three-quarters of the painting is finished. You must let this artist fulfill his vision. That's why I like to be a house displayed by decorators. No one said "I don't like that color; my husband won't like that canopy bed." The truth is that men who say they won't sleep in these beds just don't want their friends to know how much they like them.

Very. I believe in the light pool and lights in the room. And I don’t mind casting shadows on the ceiling light, because if you can’t place a light in a particular corner, the ceiling light will produce the same light effect on the ceiling, so you can get a pool Lights down. But the key point of lighting is that it should be appropriate and sufficient, and can be evenly distributed throughout the room. It must be well thought out. No matter where you sit, this room has light-you can read comfortably. Except for the two bedside lamps, the lights in the room are all on one master switch, because you want to be able to turn them off and on independently.

How long did it take to put this room together?

Spent a lot of thought. I started before the show three months ago, and I couldn't sleep two weeks before the installation. It took the painter two weeks to finish the wall. This is overwhelming for him and me. I can see that the room is completed, but it is impossible to convey the information I want. Sometimes I think it is too dark and too bright. I am like a customer. I am the same as everyone else. So I was tortured by this whole thing. But it's so exciting to see all of this come together. It's like working with customers-you have to monitor every detail. There are many details in this room. If you want to design a room that uses the best things from the past and the best things today, you must do it well. There is no date in this room because there is no fashion in it. Everything is eternal. This is a timeless decoration.

Follow House Beautiful on Instagram.