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This room was designed as the State Bedroom, reserved for visiting royalty.
Together with the adjoining State Dressing Room (now a Library) it formed an imposing suite and a showcase for some of Harewood's finest furniture. After taking paint scrapes of the ceiling, the colours are now those chosen by Robert Adam. The green silk on the walls has been woven in France, an exact copy of the original pattern. The splendid Chippendale mirrors, made for this room in the early 1770's, have until relatively recently been in storage at Harewood.
 Chippendale was also responsible for the marquetry satinwood commode and secretaire, designed for the State Dressing Room. The Diana and Minerva commode with its ivory inlay and nobility of line, is often referred to as his finest creation.
The two paintings in this room are of ‘Edward, Viscount Lascelles’ by John Hoppner (1758-1810) and ‘Mrs Scott and her daughter Henrietta’ by Richard Cosway (1742-1821).
When Harewood House was built, country house owners regarded a State Bedroom fitted out in the most elegant of styles as an essential status symbol. By the time Charles Barry carried out major improvements at Harewood in the 1840s, State Bedrooms had passed out of fashion and this chamber became a sitting room for the third Countess of Harewood. Chippendale's spectacular bed was dismantled and stored in the stable block where it slumbered, half-forgotten, until rediscovered during the 1970's.
 In 1999 the Heritage Lottery Fund provided 70% of the £200,000 cost of restoration. Expert advisers, carvers and gilders, mattress makers, silk weavers, seamstresses and craftsmen and women all over the country worked on this splendid project. Today this masterpiece of English furniture - regarded as the finest documented State Bed made in England during the second half of the 18th century - can be seen in all its former glory.
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