'If you want to look good on the slopes, you need to think 1980s," said Robin, my ski guide, as we stopped to warm up with a rum-laced hot chocolate. "Bright colours are what it's all about," he added, looking approvingly as I peeled off my fuschia bobble hat.

Style is important to Scandinavians, but you'd never have known it judging by their ski resorts. The last time I was in Scandinavia to ski, several years ago, the experience was a triumph of function over form. While the bleached Nordic landscapes I ploughed through by day were as frostily thrilling as I'd hoped, the hotel I drifted back to each night was more Surbiton than Stockholm. But in the last 12 months, the region's celebrated sense of style has finally hit its slopes.

Last January saw the opening of one of the world's most impressively designed hostels in Åre, Sweden's largest ski resort. Hotell Åre Torg's custom-shaped bunkbeds come with cosy Swedish blankets as well as feather duvets, and a bed in a dorm room costs as little as £20pp pn. A year on, a new Design Hotel, Copperhill Mountain Lodge, also in Åre, has upped the style ante.

Pitched at the summit of Mount Förberget, Copperhill's location makes for million-kronor views and eye-watering taxi fares; if you miss the single daily ski bus into Åre and back, a taxi will cost you about £30 each way for the 15-minute journey, though it's possible to ski-in and ski-out if you're an intermediate skier. But its rooms are not beyond the reach of the average credit-crunched skier. While a double will set you back €200 a night, if you're travelling as a group, you can book the eight-bed suite with three separate bedrooms for less than £40pp pn.

Designed by Peter Bohlin, the Swedish American who once built a house for Bill Gates, the 112-room lodge looks like the kind of place the editorial team from Wallpaper* magazine might choose to do their après-skiing. Made of wood and great chunks of local Jämtland stone, the lobby is dominated by a Flintstones-style fireplace several storeys high and a wall lined entirely with shimmering copper.

Koncept, the designers commissioned to oversee the interiors, took their inspiration from the region's copper mining history. A huge photograph of 19th-century miners hangs above the bar in Copperhill Co, one of the hotel's two restaurants.

While the lodge is packed with design classics such as Eames rockers and Noguchi tables, the thread that weaves them all together is the hint of copper that flecks everything from the bathroom tiles to the reception's "artichoke" lights and the small battalion of Tom Dixon's pendant shades that light Niesti, the main restaurant.

Koncept have also hinted at the country's Sami traditions; the deep red and orange striped carpet that runs through the hotel takes its colours from Sami clothing and, in the hotel spa, you can enjoy a birch oil massage in a treatment room modelled on a Sami kâtor (hut). For me the only dud note in the whole place was the hotel's pianist, who played cheesy soft-rock classics in the lobby each evening.

Though fans of contemporary design would stay at Copperhill wherever it was located, for most guests the stylish surroundings are simply an added bonus to the skiing. It's also ideal if, like me, you approach skiing as a form of speeded-up hiking rather than a race to get downhill. With plenty of runs below the treeline, Åre's pistes offer myriad long and winding routes around pine-clad mountains and up to glorious look-out points high above vast, glinting Lake Åre.

Setting out for my first day's skiing as the feeble winter sun tried to warm up the mountain, a little ice on the slopes was the only downside to the windless, sunny conditions. As my neglected muscles slowly cranked into gear, I happily followed my guide on

an intricate route from Copperhill Lodge down into Åre, past snow-dusted pines and ribbons of pawprints weaving off into the trees. At one point we stopped to admire a frozen waterfall, its huge glossy icicles standing out against the rocks.

If the downhill skiing had been a shock after a long break from the slopes, there was a bigger physical challenge ahead that afternoon when I swapped guides - and skis - to go out on one of the resort's cross-country tracks.

Led by Markus, a former professional cross-country skier, at first it felt odd using such weightless skis and keeping them within set tracks but, as the light began to fade and we pushed on through the surrounding birch forest I got into a meditative swoosh. "Cross-country draws you in," said Markus, encouragingly, as my chest began to burn and my cheeks turned the colour of red-hot copper.

As the snow fell and a low mist settled, it felt as though someone had suddenly pushed a mute button on the landscape. "When it's like this it's as though the landscape is sleeping. The animals are silent and everything goes so quiet," whispered Markus as we made our way past a frozen lake, fairytale cottages and bare, shivering trees that seemed to have taken on a frostbitten purple hue.

An hour or so later, as we turned to head home, the light changed again and the reflection from the snow gave off an eerie glow, as though we were passing through puddles of bright moonlight, even though it was still day.

? Scandinavian Airlines (0871 521 2772, flysas.co.uk) flies to Östersund via Stockholm from Heathrow, London City and Manchester from £230 rtn inc tax. Buses from Östersund airport to Åre, cost SKr280pp (£23) each way (0046 8120 92000, flygtaxi.se); taxis around SKr825 (+647 20444, aredalenstaxi.se). Design Hotels (00800 3746 8357, designhotels.com) offers doubles at Copperhill Mountain Lodge from €200pn; 8-bed rooms from €310pn, both B&B. Hotell Åre Torg (+647 51590, hotellaretorg .se) has bunk beds from SKr240pp pn, breakfast SKr50. Hotel Granen (+647 51560, aregranen.se) has doubles from SKr800 B&B. For information on skiing, contact Skistar (+771 840000, skistar.com). Further information: visitsweden.com.