Working with fabrics is like dressing up. It's the fun part of creating a room, where you can allow your fantasies to ruin up. Rooms can be completely altered by different soft furnishings - and changed for summer and winter. If furniture is the underpinning of a design scheme, then soft furnishings provide fashionable touches.

It is a rare house or flat completely ignores soft furnishings. And it will be one which is poorer for doing so. Soft furnishings are also the most adaptable, the most frequently altered and the most variable element of any decorative scheme. Equally, with the misuse of clashing colors, overactive or inappropriate patterns and a wild assortment of textures, even the most perfectly proportioned room and the best furniture are overwhelmed. It's important not to try so hard that your cleverness is more apparent than the room itself. The flouncing Eighties are a dire example of what can happen when too much money meets too much design. Yards of ornate fabrics writhed and twisted around curtain poles and oozed, lava-like, across the floors. Edges were bobbled, trimmed and ruffled - a truly overplayed style.