A single tube light hangs above a utilitarian sink, casting a ghostly pallor across the blood red lino. Two simple chairs, bent from tubular steel, sit below a picture window that stretches the full width of the room, while a black Bakelite lampshade dangles above the bed from a long mechanical arm. The sound of coughing echoes down the corridor from the communal showers, as the plumbing clangs into action. I'm staying a night in the Bauhaus, the crucible of sleek 20th-century design – but it feels more like an East German youth hostel.

"We wanted to return the rooms to how the students would have encountered them," says Wolfgang Thöner, head of the collection at the Bauhaus Foundation in Dessau, which has just reopened the school's accommodation block to paying guests in search of the authentic Bauhäusler experience, from €35 for a single room. "Thankfully," adds Thöner, "you don't have to walk down to the basement to have a shower any more – and the beds are a bit more comfortable."

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With almost hostel-cheap prices, let's hope the rooms attract crowds of architecture and design students, to reinfect the pristine white shell with the spirited energy it needs. Just don't forget your egg whisk.