Deborah Needleman

I found this book at this local store called Watson Kennedy, which is the kind of store I could easily spend hours in. It’s the kind of place where everything costs just a little more than it probably should, and where items are organized by color instead of type. It’s the kind of place that sells several kinds of olive oils as well as antique etiquette books. Anyway, the reason I share this is because it’s also the kind of store that leads people to buy books they really don’t need. show more

This is just such a book, but it was actually a joy to read. It’s a coffee-table-type book filled with lovely illustrations and tips for decorating your home. The tips are great, and only a little ridiculous at times. It’s a well-written and useful book (hence the four star rating), and I found it inspirational. The only problems are that a) I don’t really have a budget to start adding things to our house (although my husband and I both dream of a new couch, and maybe a coffee table that isn’t a $19 shoe rack from Target) and b) we rent our apartment. So a lot of the suggestions – especially ones involving painting walls or hanging a lot of items on the wall – just aren’t practical for us right now.

However! Someday we will figure out a way to buy a place, and at that point I will pull this book out again and look it over. The suggestions about lighting were especially great, which is a sentence that really makes me feel like an adult. I don’t think 13-year-old me would think that I’d enjoy a book with a lot of talk about lamps, and yet I did. If you are lucky enough to be about to buy a house, or trying to figure out ways to decorate your home, I think this is a nice book to pick up. show less

The authors wrote this book to help teach you how to "read" a room. As such, this is a book that has significantly more pictures than text (not a bad thing, in this case).

The authors go through each of the major rooms in the home. Each chapter contains several examples and breaks down what makes that room work. They talk about the important considerations for choosing the major pieces for that room and give a number of tips, all illustrated. I can almost guarantee that you won't like show more everything in this book, but there is enough variety that you are likely to find inspiration somewhere.

This book contains a rather unique feature; the authors show you how to mix and match different styles. Some books will tell you to only pair traditional pieces or modern pieces; never mix them. This book has a "mix and match" section for each chapter that explores how you can unify stylistically different pieces to make for a more interesting interior.

This book will not teach you how to decorate, but it will provide inspiration and help you understand what you like and dislike. I am definitely looking at things differently after reading it. show less

This book is gorgeous and inspiring. However, the tips seem a bit out of reach for the average person. Having an already spectacular apartment or house seems to be the key. Yet, I'm still a sucker for the fabulous photos.

I'm in the process of buying a house and this was the first decorating book I picked up at the library, somewhat at random. So I can't speak to how original the material is, just how helpful. After finishing this, I'm quite sad that the magazine (Domino) is no more. I would have subscribed. The photos are lovely, of course. The furniture is not totally out of reach for the average person. The case studies and the mix-and-match ideas were particularly helpful. There's one section where a room show more has the same furniture arranged three different ways, depending on the focus; I would have loved to see that done many more times with additional rooms. It would have been nice to have more than one page worth of help on determining your own style; I still have no idea there. Nice resources list in the back. show less