BARDSTOWN, Ky. — It doesn't matter whether the sun is shining bright into My Old Kentucky Home; the interior is generating an eye-popping radiance all by itself these days.

Thanks to a nearly $1 million renovation that is not quite complete, the inside of Federal Hill — the Bardstown mansion that most Kentuckians know as My Old Kentucky Home — has a new look that includes lots of colors and patterns representative of the early Victorian era.

Why early Victorian when the Georgian-style house was built between 1795 and 1818? Because Stephen Foster wrote the song "My Old Kentucky Home," which has become synonymous with the house and is Kentucky's state song, in the early 1850s, or early Victorian era.

There has been much debate about whether Foster — a relative of the family of John Rowan, a former congressman and U.S. senator who built the home — ever set foot in Bardstown, much less inside Federal Hill, but that's another story.

Gone are the less colorful and less ornate walls, carpets, draperies and bed hangings that were more representative of the Federal period, when Federal Hill was built.

Now the inside of the house has more colors than a rainbow. The decor in each room includes several attention-grabbing patterns.

"It's kind of shocking, compared to what it was," Alice Heaton, manager of My Old Kentucky Home State Park, said during an open house at the historic home. "Before it was just sterile."

During the open house, pictures of what each room looked like before the renovation were stationed in the rooms to give visitors unfamiliar with the previous decor an idea of just how much things had changed.

"My favorite room is the dining room. I think it's indicative of the time period," said Ron Langdon, the home's curator. The walls of the dining room have been decorated with a scenic wallpaper of stylized palm trees atop an Italian balustrade.

John Rowan Jr. and his wife Rebecca probably saw palm trees for the first time when they visited the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (a former kingdom comprising Sicily and Naples) in the late 1840s, Langdon said. Rowan was the U.S. charge d'affaires to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies at the time.

"I think it invokes something from Italy, from the Sicilies they enjoyed," Langdon said. Draperies in the dining room are royal blue and gold silk damask. The carpet has a medallion design in rose, red and black.

Kevin Hereford, a restoration consultant for the anonymous donor — a private, nonprofit foundation — that is paying for the renovation, said his favorite is the best parlor, the house's most formal room.

That room now has a rainbow wallpaper in greens and yellows with a damask overlay pattern in taupe. The carpet is a cut pile that has shades of teal with highlights of gold, red and black in a block design. The draperies are red damask.

Rebecca Rowan's second-floor bedroom now has matching bed hangings and draperies in floral printed cotton that is predominantly rust colored. The wallpaper, which is burnt orange, white and brown, has a pattern that brings to mind tornados, ice cream cones or perhaps spinning tops. The room has ingrain carpet, "a small medallion, almost honeycombed, kind of carpet," that was reproduced from an original Kentucky period fragment, Langdon said.

"Pattern upon pattern was just commonplace in the 19th century — lots of color, different designs used together," he said. "All these patterns used together give you an overall mid-19th century feel."

Langdon, Heaton, Hereford and Brooks Howard, a state Department of Parks historic sites and museums official, chose all of the materials used in the renovation, most of which were special-ordered, Langdon said.

The renovation, which is expected to be completed within six months, began in November 2004. The work is about 85 percent complete; carpet for the children's bedroom and draperies for the library have not arrived.

All of the wallpapers are hand block-printed (which means they are expensive), instead of roller- or screen-printed, Langdon said. The wallpaper in the large hallway, which has a block pattern in taupe and off-white with a black and green design and a touch of mahogany, was a discontinued pattern, but the company that made it agreed to make it again, he said.

Doors inside the home that had been painted white and the front door have been hand-grained to look like crotched mahogany. Gold leaf brass relief cornices that had been used in the home before the last restoration in 1977 were taken out of the basement and are now being used in the dining room and the best parlor.

Some of the furniture has been moved to different, "more appropriate" rooms, and the outside of the house has been given new shutters.

No work was done to the third floor, which has been closed to the public for years by the fire marshal's office because it has only one door, Langdon said. The third floor is used for storage.