Boutique rooms in artful style

Bed and breakfasts never used to look like this. Instead of chintz, plastic Teasmades and cheap pine furniture, at 40 Winks in Stepney Green, east London, there are extravagant artworks, antiques and an overriding sense of high, theatrical glamour. In the bathroom, rather than an avocado suite, you find a silver tub with a lion's mouth for a tap, in front of an artfully distressed gold wall and the breakfast room is modelled on Rome's 16th-century Palazzo Sacchetti.

"Mary McCartney was here recently, doing a photo shoot of Daisy and Pearl Lowe," says David Carter, the interior designer who owns it. "And tomorrow we're doing a shoot for a Dutch company."

In vogue

The four-storey townhouse, which dates to 1717, has been used for celebrity and fashion shoots and German Vogue declared it "the most beautiful small hotel in the world". But this is still a B&B and it is reasonably priced. There are just two rooms — a single for £90 (Dh497) a night and a double for £130 (Dh718), sharing the same bathroom.

While Carter's eye for interiors is unique, his decision to open the spare bedrooms of his home to paying guests is not. A growing number of designers, artists and gallery owners are renting out rooms and creating a new breed of stylish B&Bs. For the owners it's a chance to find new income in a recession and draw in a new audience for their creative endeavours; for the customers they provide an interesting alternative to the increasingly identikit boutique hotel.

Similar things are happening around the UK. After working in New York for Donna Karan, then in London and Italy, knitwear designer Wallace Shaw has returned to his native Scotland to open two rooms in his home within the grand Leith Assembly Rooms in Edinburgh. In Hastings, East Sussex, fashion designer Lionel Copley runs the four-room Swan House B&B in a 15th-century cottage; in Aberdyfi, Gwynedd, designer Ann Hughes runs Llety Bodfor, a chic seaside property where, if you like anything in your room, you can buy it from her interiors shop next door; and in Bath, sculptor Robert Hornyold-Strickland rents three rooms in his pretty Georgian house, letting guests watch him at work.

In Whitstable, the Front View gallery is known for its exhibitions of contemporary photography but owners Julie Thorne and Tom Sutherland diversified into providing accommodation.

Inimitable ideas

The couple converted two bedrooms in their home adjoining the gallery, decorating them to a standard that can rival any full-service hotel but with an attention to detail that no large property can imitate. There's an airy, seaside theme — white floorboards and rugs, white iMac computers on which you can watch TV, and complimentary beverages and chocolate. Breakfast is laid out in the gallery and seems to have been as delicately curated as the exhibitions, from the artful choice of glassware to the old Kilner jars for the granola and cereal, the antique teapots and cute silver butter knife. A double costs £95 (Dh525) a night, or a family can take both for £155.

Some within the hospitality industry are likening the trend to the "supper club" scene, where chefs or keen amateurs open their flats or houses to paying diners in search of an original, intimate evening out.

"Over the last few years the boutique hotel concept has become so standard that it's hard to stand out," says Justin Salisbury, the 22-year-old founder of Artist Residence, which opened in Brighton two years ago, to be followed in May this year by an outpost in Penzance. Salisbury isn't an artist but all the staff he employs are. And while the prospect of a fearsome landlady meant many approached B&Bs with trepidation, now the chance to meet an owner who is plugged into the local art scene is part of the selling point.

"People are searching for experiences that are more authentic," says Carter from 40 Winks.

"They want to have a connection with something human, rather than robots who have been on a customer-care programme. I get e-mails from people saying they'll come anytime we have a vacancy in the next three months. It has taken over my life."