Repeating patterns for a unified effect

If you would like to make a dollar-stretching investment in a more attractive bedroom, let a boldly patterned fabric determine your decorating theme.

Here, the designer for Panta Astor emphasizes the look of pattern by repeating it on the walls, ceiling, bed, and other pieces of furniture. He uses correlated wall coverings and fabrics to obtain the unified effect.

Such an elegant canopy bed, he notes, need not be high priced. It can be made by a home handyman or hired carpenter with ordinary 4-inch by 4-inch lumber, and is anchored to the wall for greater stability. This poster frame was enameled a glistening white and then draped with 23-inch wide fabric panels that have been lined with sturdy white duck.

Each drape is held in a smartly tailored handkerchief fold by a small sewn-in ring attached to a cup hook about 40 inches from the floor. The fold allows the white duck to be seen in striking contrast to the outsized flower clusters in the ''Jane's Bouquet'' pattern. The dust ruffle is box-pleated white duck, as well. The comforter-bedspread also has white duck backing, and each pillow sham is bordered with the duck.

The designer covered what he terms a ''basic cube'' to serve as bedside table. He built a 30-inch by 20-inch box, 27 inches high, of three-eighths-inch plywood, then covered it with the help of adhesive with 41/2 yards of the same flowered fabric. He lined the cover, padded the top area, and added grommets to form corner-pleat detail. A tied white cord completed the effect.

The wall cabinet is a garage-sale ''find'' that he also enameled white. He then covered the lower panels in the patterned fabric and gathered more of the fabric into shirred panels behind the grille of the upper doors. For the windows he followed the same basic procedure as the canopy drape.