These five new books on home décor could hardly be more different, yet are unified by a common goal: to help us craft our homes into more comfortable, beautiful and uniquely personalized spaces.
HOW DOES YOUR GARDEN GROW
It’s only natural that most of us focus on fixing up the inside of our home before we even think about the outside. Aside from the mandatory effort to establish minimum curb appeal, the yard doesn’t get much of a plan at all. Cultivating Garden Style can change this. The big book of inspired ideas from popular columnist and blogger Rochelle Greayer guides readers through the process of transforming outdoor spaces—vast or tiny—into practical yet gorgeous reflections of your own style. Wondering if you even have a garden style? You do, and all will be revealed as you respond to chapters that highlight specific styles via beautiful photographs and a framework of recurring elements—how to personalize with outdoor furniture and accessories, how to select plants—which help you discover and articulate what you like and why. Greayer also includes plenty of simple DIY projects to ensure your space has as much room for personal touches as possible.
EUROPEAN GRAND DESIGN
Veranda magazine is all about luxury and the very best in interior design. This means the magazine’s newest coffee table tome, Veranda: A Passion for Living, is not so much a practical guide as it is a showcase of some of the most beautiful homes in Europe, each with its own style, sense of place and personality. This is total eye candy for us average do-it-yourselfers, but it’s sure to inspire, teach and elevate our sense of the possible. If we see big, then we can dream big and perhaps adapt big. This is the perfect treat for both the design enthusiast and the armchair traveler.
DECORATE WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM FRIENDS
Desha Peacock has lots of friends. From the bushel of folks she’s gathered together to tell us their stories in her new home décor book, Create The Style You Crave On A Budget You Can Afford, it looks like she could get anyone to talk about anything. No wonder she’s an award-winning TV host and producer. Desha enlists her budget-savvy friends into her conspiratorial cohort, so that we readers come to feel that we’re part of the teamas well, making the most out of our own homes with whatever we’ve got. For instance, there’s Corri in Arkansas, who takes us through her house room by room (with Instagram-inspired photos), proudly showing us how she turned her Little Rock, Arkansas, budget (she operates her own restaurant downtown) into a shining example of design magic. In the second half of the book, Desha lays out every last decorating option we might consider, taking us through “Decision Making 101” for our own idiosyncratic case. Tips on mood boards, color, budget and a resource list round out this well-balanced guide.
YOUR STYLE GURU
On the same subject, but on a different tack, HGTV star and Good Housekeeping Home Design Director Sarah Richardson shows so much confidence in her decorative good sense, she even names her approach (and her book) after herself: Sarah Style has much less regard for budgetary constraints, placing all its emphatic wisdom instead on cleanliness, good taste and artful arrangement. If you have the resources and the ambition, then Sarah is the style guru for you. Richardson goes room by room and offers a virtuosic range of visions: formal, informal, bachelor, Parisian, Victorian, Retro, Pop, minimal and many more, all absolutely gorgeous.
YOU CAN RESTORE IT
The art of furniture restoration is an oft-overlooked subject in the DIY design world, but it finally gets the grand treatment it deserves in Christophe Pourny’s sophisticated and engaging guide, The Furniture Bible: Everything You Need to Identify, Restore & Care for Furniture. As one of the official furniture restorers for the City of New York, Pourny knows his stuff. He challenges readers with a formidable syllabus, including the abilities to identify any piece of furniture by its historical period, materials, construction and finish along with a full run-down of repair techniques and methods of refurbishment. Hundreds of detailed photographs and step-by-step montages make this book a complete education.
