Without eBay, it is unlikely that we would have decorated or furnished our house at all. The William Morris wallpaper in our dining room ended up costing £7 a roll, rather than £28. Our white high-gloss kitchen was first admired in a lovely department store for just over £10,000 – on eBay, we got it for £2,200. And eBay is not just for saving money, the perfect French chateau mirror would never have been found by more traditional means, even if we’d scoured its country of origin for a month.

One’s home is one’s sanctuary but so is the local pub, Harvey Nichols and an über-luxe day spa. However, as the credit crunch tightens its grip, our home will become increasingly important. Choose styles and colour palettes that embrace and soothe you. For those on the first rungs of the property ladder, it can be quite difficult to establish your interior style. Our reference points are usually limited to our parents’ home, some dodgy student flats and a few aspirational images from the Sunday papers. It is no coincidence that most footballers’ homes resemble a medley of five star hotels (assuming the pages of Hello! are to be believed).

Other than the home supplements from the Sunday papers, most interior publications are quite expensive for what they are. Monthly magazines can be seasonally dictated and books tend to be produced by art-house publishers so rarely find themselves in the special offer section. The solution is to ‘borrow’. Many public libraries carry a number of periodicals and big bookshops tend to have coffee bars where you can peruse some selected volumes with no promise to purchase.

Finally, once you get started, it is worth noting that many interior design boutiques will impart their professional advice for free – providing they believe you to be a serious customer. If you have already chosen a few pieces for a room, pop into a few shops for their suggestions of complementary colours, fabrics and pieces. If their prices are above budget, you don’t need to buy: just take their recommendations on board and leave the buying to places where your money will go further.