House Beautiful “The Home Book” Book Review
House Beautiful’s “The Home Book” is a gorgeous, educational and inspirational decorating guide-book filled with over 460 pages of design advice and more than 500 photos of rooms designed by top interior designers. “The Home Book” is the literary equivalent of having your very own on-call personal interior stylist available to answer your pressing design questions (How do I pick the right decor colors? or What patterns work together? - to name a few), and offers up fresh, decorating advice at the turn of a page.
“The Home Book” contains three sections:
Understand Your Home: Lays the foundation for understanding the importance of your home’s exterior location, architecture and space/floor plan. This section is critical as this is the foundation on which the ensuing layers of design shall rest. Learn how to highlight your home’s design assets and diminish its design liabilities with the sage advice of designers who’ve overcome design challenges hundreds of times over in their profession of creating beautiful, comfortable and livable interiors. One of the interior designers highlighted in this section is Shawn Henderson of Shawn Henderson Interior Design (New York). Mr. Henderson explains the importance of achieving balance “between the space and the decorative elements within it”, and offers insightful advice for how you can achieve it.
Elements of Design: Learn how to use the seven elements of Design: Ambience, Color, Lighting, Fabric & Trimmings, Walls & Ceilings, Floors and Window Treatments to create your dream home interior. If the thought of introducing color into your home frightens you, the section on color which includes a very straight-forward color primer will assuage your color fears and prepare you to boldly introduce color to your home. I’ve learned over the years from my readers that choosing decor color is their number one design fear. Their number two decor terror? Patterns, and how to correctly use them. The fabric and trimmings section includes “Instant Room” illustrated guides to mixing and matching fabrics and patterns - I think this section alone will give a confidence boost to all who shudder when faced with the task of adding patterned decor to their rooms.
Design, Room by Room: Over 200 pages filled with beautiful photos of rooms (from bedrooms to bathrooms to kitchens to living rooms to home offices to kids rooms to outdoor living rooms) designed in all manners of styles and tastes provide a visual learning experience with an exciting dose of inspiration that will set the heart aflutter of any decorating diva worth her salt. On page 363 a home office designed by the immensely talented Celerie Kimble (one of my fave designers) illustrates the results of expertly bringing together varied design elements and smartly designing the room’s layout to accommodate for the flow of everyday living while working in a beautiful organized space.
Equally compelling design advice and tips show you how to get the look at home. Designer Ernest de la Torre explains his top ten rules for using and hanging wall art. As you will recall, one of my top ten design trends for 2009 is “Sanctuary Home”. Ellen Kennon shows you how to create a holistic sanctuary-style bedroom, a place you can retreat to from this increasingly maddening world of economic upheavals and geo-political strife. With over 45 pages dedicated to expert “how-to decorate a bedroom” advice, and the accompanying photos of bedrooms designed in a range of styles: Contemporary, French country, Neo-classic, Eclectic and so many others; you’re sure to find one that will inspire your future bedroom design.
Available November 15th, 2008 on Amazon.com (House Beautiful The Home Book: Creating a Beautiful Home of Your Own (House Beautiful Series)by Carol Spier 
**As a quick note, I’ve linked “The Home Book “to our sister company’s (Room In A Kit LLC) affiliate partnership with Amazon.com. All book sale commissions from this link will be donated to the American Cancer Society Relay For Life.
Carmen Natschke
Publisher/Editor, The Decorating Diva LLC
Reprint permission.
Leave a comment!