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The power of a bit of whirlwind decorating is engraved on the nation's psyche, so it's not really surprising that social housing is getting in on the act. On the perenially-popular television programme Changing Rooms, celebrity interior designers like Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen and Linda Barker stride through the living rooms of Middle England, conjuring bijou des-res with just a staple gun and a few sheets of MDF.

Everyone wants to live somewhere nice; but not everyone wants a mock-up of a Regency ballroom, so when Dales Housing of Derbyshire wanted to make over some low-demand bedsits, it turned to Sally Clarke, show-flat expert at housebuilder Lovell.

Denefields Court is set in a highly desirable area near the Derbyshire Dales, and its 50 one-bedroom flats and bedsits should be hot property. But although a thriving community of over-50s lives there, Dales has found that, when bedsits become vacant, they are impossible to let. Last November, with 11 long-vacant properties on its hands, it asked Clarke to decorate some show-flats to spark the imaginations of potential residents. In three weeks and with a budget of just £10,000, she transformed two flats that had a severe image problem. Six months on, all the bedsits are occupied.

Dales had already contracted Lovell to replace the kitchens and bathrooms at Denefields Court as part of its improvement programme but, to fill these problem properties, it decided the dated decor would have to go as well. "They didn't want to spend a massive sum on going to an interior design agency, so they asked me to brighten the flats up a bit," says Clarke. "They were in serious need of some refurb work – very dated and tired with swirly carpets and 1960s prints."

Working with a team of Lovell's contractors, she stripped the grotty woodchip from the walls and gave the bedsits a fresh coat of emulsion and gloss, banished

old-fashioned lampshades and replaced an ugly wall-mounted heater with an electric fire with a mock flame and attractive surround. Clarke also bought in new furniture to demonstrate how the flat could look once inhabited. True to the spirit of the frantic home makeover TV shows, time was tight and resources limited. "I had to work with anything I could buy, from anywhere that had stock in. We tried to order furniture, but the minimum delivery time was eight weeks and the show-flats had to be completed in three," she explains. A total of £2820 was spent on furniture, lighting and curtains for each flat, including a sofa for £400 and a single bed for £200, at trade prices, and £500 on lights. The cost of building and decorating took up a large proportion of the rest of the budget.

Chucking out previous residents' chintz wasn't the greatest challenge, though. Unlike the one-bedroom flats in the block, the bedsits are very small and do not have a separate sleeping area – the most common gripe from prospective tenants. Clarke came up with a different way of giving the residents more privacy in each of the two show-flats.

In one, she separated the bed from the living area by adding a folding screen, bought from a local furniture shop.

The second bedsit underwent a more dramatic transformation, as Clarke created a single bedroom by introducing a fake wall. To spread natural light through the flat, because there was only one window in each, at the front of the main room, Clarke came up with yet another ingenious solution. She used using glass panels around the top of the fake wall, to diffuse light through to the living room. "People did like it, because it gave them a separate sleeping area," she says,"although, personally, I thought the folding screen left the room more spacious."

She also changed the solid doors between the bedsits' entrance halls and their living rooms with new, half-glazed ones so that light could reach from the windows, in the living room walls, into the halls.

The show-flats had their grand unveiling in November 2002, when 300 people turned up to two open days. Applicants on the council housing register and Dales' own transfer list were invited, and adverts were placed in local newspapers and on the radio. "We got a lot of people coming through the doors, and we certainly let all the flats on the back of that," says Jennifer Bedford, policy and research manager at Dales. The residents' association also profited from the coffee morning, making £300 on the tombola for chosen charities and its own funds.

With Denefields Court now fully occupied, the association is considering its next move. There wasn't much change from the £10,000 budget for the show-flats, but, as Bedford points out, all the furniture can be used in subsequent schemes. Dales is embarking on a similar project in a more rural area using its own maintenance service, where tenants who decide to move in will be able to choose how their flat is decorated at no extra charge.

If the scheme transforms the fortunes of the low-demand block, the service will be extended to other properties. "It was a one-off to start with at Denefields Court, but we had such a positive response, that we're going to replicate it," Bedford explains. "With a bedsit, people can't always see beyond the empty shell to what it can be made into, so they need a bit of help."