Platform beds with crisp white sheets and taupe coverlets; 32-inch flat-screen TVs; bright colors on the walls and mod furnishings that maximize space. No, it's not the latest boutique hotel. It's the new look of Motel 6.

That's right. Over the past year or so, motel chains like Super 8 and Red Roof Inn have been getting a makeover. Not unlike the bedding wars initiated by Starwood Hotels & Resorts in the late '90s, motels have been upgrading their interiors, doing away with those dreadful floral bedspreads and, in many cases, adding amenities that rival those of more upscale properties.

Red Roof Inn, based in Columbus, Ohio, is adding spa-inspired walk-in showers with rain-flow shower heads and pillow-top mattress pads as part of what it's calling a Next Generation redesign. Wyndham Hotel Group's Super 8 chain, which added curved shower rods, granite countertops and hair dryers to its previously bare-bones bathrooms a couple of years ago, is taking it up a notch by replacing bedding and adding nicer vanities in the bathrooms.

Holiday Inn is updating everything from its lobbies to its logo (formerly written out in cursive, it has been edited down to a cleaner, modern "H"). It even has created a piped-in signature scent that isn't a byproduct of a highly chlorinated pool. The smell is citrus and white tea, with subtle undercurrents of perilla leaf, woods and herbs.

Redesigns earn high praise

The budget hotel segment was due for a design overhaul as the discrepancy between economy hotels still stuck in the floral bedspread mode and more upscale, fashion-forward newcomers, like NYLO Hotels and Starwood's Aloft brand, grew. And though none of the upgrades are plush by any means, the extent of the renovations and redesigns, which focus on minimalist chic, has been surprising guests and style arbiters alike.

In February, for example, Motel 6, which hired the design firm Priestmangoode of London to facilitate its transformation, took Travel & Leisure magazine's 2010 design award for Best Large Hotel for its "smart, hip, and of the moment" Phoenix design, as the chain calls the new look.

Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express, owned by InterContinental Hotels Group, is investing $1 billion across more than 3,200 hotels to refresh the brands and is the farthest along in its overhaul. About 2,000 hotels have been renovated since October 2007 when the company first announced the initiative, decluttering reception desks of the usual solicitations, adding powerful shower heads, curved shower rods and upgraded bedding. Motel 6, operated by Accor Worldwide, which unveiled its Phoenix design last May, has revamped more than 50 of its 1,000 North American locations. Red Roof Inn, which has 350 locations nationwide and 50 hotels in the pipeline, plans to build 17 or so based on the Next Generation prototype.

Finding the deals

How does $40 a night sound for the updated Motel 6 Houston Reliant Park, which a recent Web search turned up for late March? Motel 6 conveniently flags revamped hotels on its booking site as "re-modeled" in any given search result list.

Red Roof Inn has been playing up its low prices with an "It's chic to be frugal" message that emphasizes its free morning coffee and low room rates. Click on Red Hot Deals on its home page for specials.

Of course, major renovations never come cheap. And it's ultimately the guest who ends up paying for the upgrades.

Still, fans of the new designs say it is worth it. Philip Pursley, a project manager for an Indiana energy performance contract company, has spent time at the Holiday Inn at the University of Memphis practically every week for the past year. In doing so he also saw the transformation of the hotel.

"I just watched it go from a 5 or 6 up to a 9 or 10," Pursley said. Before the renovation he added, "it was going to a motel." Now, he said, "it's very pleasant to the eye. It just makes you feel comfortable."

So comfortable, Pursley has been willing to pay more than at other motels. He estimates that on some trips he has paid about $35 a night more than he would have at a competitor. He has also taken his wife, Jannie, to the hotel. She has since reminded him that soon his job will end and he will have to come home, to Glasgow, Ky., where the bed is perhaps not so cushy and the staff not so accommodating. "She said, 'Your good life is getting ready to be over with,'" Pursley said. "'You've got to come back home.'"