Books » Interior Design Books

From not enough space and too many things to not knowing what color to paint the living room walls, many of us struggle with our homes. Now Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan, frequent makeover expert on HGTV's Mission: Organization and Small Spaces, Big Style, shares the do-it-yourself strategies that have enabled his clients and fans to transform their apartments into well-organized, beautiful places that suit their style and budget.

Week by week, Apartment Therapy will guide you to treat common problems, eliminate clutter, and revamp even the tiniest space. Here is an eight-step process that includes:

A therapeutic questionnaire to help you get in touch with your personal taste and diagnose your home's physical, emotional, and energy flow issues

A prescription with recommendations for each room based on your needs and lifestyle-including tips on how to use color, lighting, and accessories

A treatment plan, including regular maintenance schedules to ensure the ongoing health of your space

Illustrations of floor plans and decorative examples that allow you to visualize concepts before you begin

With surprising ease and without elaborate professional help, Apartment Therapy will help you clear a path through disorder and indecision-to reveal a home you'll love.

A practical guide to using color successfully.

The power of color is its ability to influence mood, create atmosphere, and enhance perception. As a result, one of the most effective ways to transform any room is by changing its color. Which colors to use is the challenge.

The Color Scheme Bible is a practical, yet inspiring reference for those who want to take advantage of different colors without clashing. It contains 150 color scheme ideas for home decorators and interior designers.

The book explains how to choose colors that will complement each other for a subdued effect, and which colors and combinations will energize the room.

Topics covered include: - How color creates ambiance and atmosphere - Using color to give a small room the illusion of space and depth - How to create the feeling of warmth and light with color - Distinctive color schemes inspired by nature, art, travel and even a favorite possession.

The book also includes a variety of color combination palettes that can be used with different materials for refreshingly original color schemes.

The Color Scheme Bible is an essential handbook for home decorators and interior designers.

The study of human body measurements on a comparative basis is known as anthropometrics. Its applicability to the design process is seen in the physical fit, or interface, between the human body and the various components of interior space.

Human Dimension and Interior Space is the first major anthropometrically based reference book of design standards for use by all those involved with the physical planning and detailing of interiors, including interior designers, architects, furniture designers, builders, industrial designers, and students of design. The use of anthropometric data, although no substitute for good design or sound professional judgment should be viewed as one of the many tools required in the design process. This comprehensive overview of anthropometrics consists of three parts.

The first part deals with the theory and application of anthropometrics and includes a special section dealing with physically disabled and elderly people. It provides the designer with the fundamentals of anthropometrics and a basic understanding of how interior design standards are established. The second part contains easy-to-read, illustrated anthropometric tables, which provide the most current data available on human body size, organized by age and percentile groupings. Also included is data relative to the range of joint motion and body sizes of children. The third part contains hundreds of dimensioned drawings, illustrating in plan and section the proper anthropometrically based relationship between user and space. The types of spaces range from residential and commercial to recreational and institutional, and all dimensions include metric conversions.

In the Epilogue, the authors challenge the interior design profession, the building industry, and the furniture manufacturer to seriously explore the problem of adjustability in design. They expose the fallacy of designing to accommodate the so-called average man, who, in fact, does not exist. Using government data, including studies prepared by Dr. Howard Stoudt, Dr. Albert Damon, and Dr. Ross McFarland, formerly of the Harvard School of Public Health, and Jean Roberts of the U.S. Public Health Service, Panero and Zelnik have devised a system of interior design reference standards, easily understood through a series of charts and situation drawings. With Human Dimension and Interior Space, these standards are now accessible to all designers of interior environments.

Promising health, wealth, and happiness, feng shui offers endless appeal -- at least in concept. Unfortunately, feng shui's seemingly complicated methods are often difficult to learn and apply in a meaningful way. Fortunately, Move Your Stuff, Change Your Life is written in plain and simple English for the modern Western reader. Revealing the ancient Chinese secrets that are as useful and necessary today as they have been for centuries, Move Your Stuff, Change Your Life communicates how to:

* MEET "THE ONE"
* FIND A DREAM JOB
* EARN BETTER GRADES IN SCHOOL
* ENJOY A BETTER SEX LIFE

Pages: 116, Edition: Fourth, Paperback, Mole Publishing Company

Feng shui focuses on correct energy flow, yet, at its core, is simply about feeling good in your surroundings. Whether you prefer traditional, contemporary, or eclectic style, the feng shui principles in this book should complement the decor in every room.

"Flea Market Style" gives you all the information and advice you need to furnish and decorate your home with "found" objects instead of new items bought in stores. Emily Chalmers and Ali Hanan explain how to find fresh and unexpected uses of second-hand pieces and antiques, and reveal how to mix old and new with flair and panache. The first part of the book, Flea Market Finds, looks at household goods, from fabrics and furniture to china, kitchenware, glass and lighting, and describes how to find special objects and indentify them on the basis of their quality, character, resillience, colour, and texture. The authors advocate a subtle mixing of styles, patterns, and colours, and emphasize the beauty of objects that have seen a bit of life. They explain how to locate bargain copies of modern classics--or the real things--and how to mix flea-market or thrift-store finds with high-end basics. The second part of the book, Putting It All Together, shows how to incorporate the style in every room--from the spaces where you cook, eat, sleep, or relax to bathing spaces and work spaces. The book ends with an extensive directory of suppliers. -Add a large dose of originality to your home--at low cost. -Lively text illustrated with Debi Treloar's inspirational photographs.

For 28 years the world-renowned interior designer Bunny Williams has been involved in a passionate love affair with an18th-century New England manor house that she found in sad repair. From the moment she walked up the driveway and her palms began to perspire, Williams knew she wanted the affair to last forever. In her sumptuous new book, An Affair with a House, the venerable decorator describes in detail how she and her husband, antiques dealer John Rosselli, rescued, nurtured, renovated, and decorated the well-worn house, giving it new life as they restored each room, resurrected the abandoned gardens, and filled this weekend home with family and friends.

Through photographs, anecdotes, how-tos, and recipes, Williams provides a rare inside look at a top decorator's retreat and explains how she approached the joys, pleasures, challenges, obstacles, and day-to-day realities of creating a beautiful, comfortable country home. An Affair with a House provides a wealth of advice on interior decor and such topics as mixing design styles, but it also addresses such practical matters as stocking the pantry and outfitting the linen closet. Beautiful photographs of the house, the gardens, and the property's rustic structures provide an intimate glimpse of the couple's lifestyle and illustrate a way of life we can all appreciate and learn from.

Atomic Ranch is an in-depth exploration of post-World War II residential architecture in America. Authors Michelle Gringeri Brown and Jim Brown, founders and publishers of the popular quarterly Atomic Ranch magazine, extol the virtues of the tract, split-level, rambler home and its many unique qualities. Atomic Ranch presents twenty-five homes showcasing inspiring examples of stylish living through beautiful color photographs, including before and after shots, design tip sidebars, and a thorough resource index.

Atomic Ranch reveals: Hallmarks of the ranch style; Inspiring original ranch homes; Ranch house transformations and makeovers; Preservation of mid-century neighborhoods; Adding personality to a ranch home; Yards and landscaping, and much more!