Bed Fellows

From an unbreakable orange teacup on a nightstand in northern France to the richly decorated cabs of Pakistani trucks, The World of Interiors lingers on the idiosyncratic and the intimate. It is a magazine that publicizes what we normally call private: uncovering homes and spaces that reveal as much about the people who inhabit them as the objects they contain. Here, editor Emily Tobin pulls back the sheets on its most memorable bedrooms.

Chris Hesford’s bedroom, as featured on the cover of the January 1984 issue of The World of Interiors, pits columns, airbrushed clouds, and gilt cherubs against a steel café table. “I love this image, which was the cover of our January 1984 issue. Kitsch and of its time, the writer described it as ‘an exercise in coping with such inherited monstrosities as the built-in cupboards.’ Airbrushed clouds and Formica marble-effect floors are certainly one way to go about it.

Over the last forty-five years the great and good have been featured in The World of Interiors, although at first glance you’d never know, as portraits of people are so rarely shown in our pages (Brian Ferry being a notable exception in issue one). This is Madonna’s bedroom in Miami, decorated by her younger brother, Christopher Ciccone. Even our Material Girl takes practicality seriously. According to the text: ‘Decorative mosquito netting—Miami is a bug haven—droops languidly from the ceiling above each bedhead and is used religiously by Madonna.’

In Will Le Clerc’s main bedroom, a patchwork cover made by Will’s mother drapes over a Victorian-made half-tester, cannibalized from various seventeenth- and eighteenth-century elements, including a chest. The Arts and Crafts hangings are falling apart. “This tiny little bedroom sums up so much of what The World of Interiors is about. Jam-packed, well-loved, a little ragged at the edges.

Seán and Dalila Shanahan’s bedroom, which receives little natural light, was given vibrant orange walls. It has an original cotto tile floor. The paintings, which date from the 1990s, are both by Seán, while matching Vico Magistretti lamps stand on the bedside tables. “There’s a common misconception that the houses in The World of Interiors are all cluttered and clad in textiles but often the opposite is true. This bedroom, with its Vico Magistretti lamps and vibrant orange walls, is, contrary to the bold palette, beautifully restrained.

Min Hogg picked up the checked cotton in this guest room from Cairo. The colors found in traditional Canary Island homes inspired the palette. “Min Hogg, founding editor of The World of Interiors, devoted a decade to making this house in a Canarian village her own. Her guest bedroom, decorated with a checked cotton discovered in Cairo, sums up her own exacting tastes.

More Alpi bird’s-eye, red this time, covers Lydia Chan’s bedside cabinet. On top is a ceramic and a sculpture by Naomi Gilon, and a Dunelm lamp customized with metal studs. “I design the space for when I’m awake, rather than when I’m unconscious,” she says. “The walls of this bedroom are painted with butterflies and hibiscus flowers. It’s so wildly OTT and at odds with how I want to live but really that’s the point of The World of Interiors. It’s about showcasing the infinite multitude of ways in which people live.

Rob Wyn Yates’s piece Superb Red looms over an Arnoldino stool by Martino Gamper from the 2000s and a table lamp of his own design. The foldaway chairs are all junk-shop finds. “The artist who owns this flat turned each room into a hymn to a single color, from cobalt to Kermit green to this fire-engine red. Imagine the commitment. What makes it even more bonkers is when he first moved in he painted everything (floors, furniture, objects, etc.) white and dressed only in white and permitted guests to only drink white wine. Single-mindedness to the max.

Hung on the bedside wall is Martin Wong’s 1981 Son of Sam Sleeps, a standout example of his distinctive ASL art. Here, the gestures form the painting’s titular tabloid headline, highlighting one of Wong’s more macabre fascinations: serial killers, in this case New York’s David Berkowitz, or the Son of Sam. Alongside the Messiah on his headboard, a sleeping Wong would have been watched over by one of his muses, the graffiti artist Sharp, or Aaron Goodstone, whose tag is inscribed over the subway sign just above.