Description:
One thing you can definitely say about this hardcover honey--you get a lot of bang for your 40 bucks: over 1,000 full-color photographs of interiors for every room in the basic home, grouped into such "Choices" as Traditional, Country, Global, and Modern, and such "schemes" as Neutral, Hot, Cool, Fresh, and Muted (where's Unscented?), plus up-close swatches for all fabrics featured in every layout, with each sample keyed to a supplier in the U.K. (where the book was produced) and/or the U.S. That's the plus side. On the minus side, both the running copy and the caption copy will likely be too pedestrian for all but the greenest interior designers (professionals or hobbyists), and regardless of the "style" they represent, the interiors shown here suffer almost uniformly from a kind of excess and overkill, almost as if they're meant to be, if not parodies, then broad-stroke pop approximations of their respective genres. Moreover, everything seems to be copping a bit from looks that were hot at least three years before the book was published. Many of the "lush" or "romantic" spreads call to mind a Versace photo shoot circa 1988, while the "rustic" and "minimal" spreads quote two of the big decorating fads of the mid-90s--Shabby Chic and Terence Conran. There is one near-perfect composition, though: flip to pages 174-75 to view a midcentury-modern drawing room so palely elegant it nearly justifies purchase of the rest of the book, especially if you're new to the trade or game of interior design. --Timothy Murphy
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