GREEN ideals are all very well but who can afford it? The surprising answer is that a stylish and eco-conscious home can be created pretty cheaply. And you do not have to go the whole hog - remember that using a few green items is better than using none.

What should you look for? It can be hard to find good-looking, reasonably priced objects that tick all the green boxes, so aim to follow at least one of the following guidelines by the interior designers One Eco Home: products should be made from recycled and recyclable materials, or they should be made from a renewable material and wood should have been grown sustainably (look for the FSC or PEFC stamps); they should be made locally - in the UK or at least in Europe; products such as cotton should be avoided unless they are organic, or opt for alternatives (hemp, jute and bamboo products have improved in recent years, and are not as hippy as they sound); the finish on hard and soft furnishings should be free from chemical lacquers, preservatives, bleaches and if possible toxic flame retardants; if they use leather, products should be a by-product of the organic, free-range meat industry.

A new one-stop shop for green interiors is Eco in Chiswick, West London. Livia Firth, one of its owners, is pleased that environmentally friendly home design is at last becoming more fashionable: “Reusing and recycling is a clear trend in furniture design and hand-made techniques are coming back in.” The shop's Magazine Mirror, for instance, is made in Indonesia from recycled magazine paper. It has a rainbow-coloured frame and costs £29 (020-8133 4252).

Larger items can also be found cheaply. According to The Ecologist, 2.5 million tons of timber is removed from libraries, churches, hospitals, pubs and homes each year in the UK. Ten per cent of this is tropical hardwood, which comes from old growth forests that cannot be replaced. Save some 200-year-old trees by reusing them in the form of reclaimed wood. Older woods add individuality to a home with colours and textures that cannot be achieved from the newer pale woods. Look at www.salvo.co.uk (020-8400 6222) for wood dealers in your area; or at www.globaltrees.org for a national directory of reclaimed furniture suppliers (search under “furniture”); www.freecycle.org is a network of local online messageboards where people in your area advertise unwanted items that they are giving away.

For a reclaimed table that costs nothing, Eva Shivdasani, the founder and creative director of the Six Senses eco-luxury spa resorts, suggests tracking down unused cable drums, which come in all sizes, and putting them on their ends. She prefers them in raw wood, which has usually been weathered to a pale grey-brown, but you could also paint them in gloss white or a bright colour to “lift” a room.

A lick of paint is the easiest way to transform a room, but it is better without the smell of toxic fumes released by Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs). Both www.ecocentric.co.uk and Eco do VOC-free paint ranges. Pots of Ecocentric's Eco Chic paint cost from £24.99, while Eco's Earthborne clay-based range costs £19.06 for a 2.5 litre pot. If that's too much B&Q refers to its own-brand paint range as “minimal or low in VOCs”; a 2.5 litre pots cost £9.98 (www.diy.com).

We are all loath to skimp on linens and towels but the organic cotton variety can be expensive. The surprising hero material is bamboo. It is naturally anti-bacterial and antiallergenic and is three times as absorbant as cotton. The one drawback to bamboo is that most of it is shipped from China. John Lewis has a double bamboo duvet for £45 (www.johnlewis.com). Eco stocks bamboo towels from £8.50 and this super-grass makes great flooring; B&Q sells a number of styles, from £22.98 a square metre.

The experts agree that lighting is the key to a welcoming home. Ecocentric stocks a gorgeous Bloom lampshade for £34.99 and a sleeker Cog Pendant lampshade for £19. The more creative types can copy Eva Shivdasani, who makes sculptural lampshades from unwanted wood and fallen tree branches: “they make fabulous shadows on the ceiling - they look very dramatic and are totally unique.”

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