Rating: 
Summary: How to arrange your couch and loveseat
Review:
This book was a huge dissapointment. Every single layout was the same. Arrange your sofa and loveseat facing each other, throw a crappy plant against the wall.
The pictures were dated looking and in black and white.
There is nothing this book has to offer that you cannot glean from watching 1 evening of HGTV.
Rating: 
Summary: A good start...
Review: But you can find better. Most of these rooms have a fireplace as focal point. Don't have a fireplace/ You'll find only parts of the book useful.
Another BIG MINUS - the lack of color pictures. Color is an important design element and one bright chair can throw off an otherwise "balanced" room. Using color appropriately, whether to support a traditional design scheme or to inject an element of surprise or whimsy is a basic decorating principle.
Finally, many of the rooms are already quite dated. Sure, you'll get a nicer look if you follow the tips in the book. What you WON'T get is a room that seems in style - today. If you're a traditionalist, that may not matter - but I found some of the traditional rooms seemed out of style too (were they faux traditonal or something?).
Having said all this, there are some basic design principles that you may find quite useful. But you'll find the same ones - and more-in updated, more complete books.
Rating:
Summary: Just throw all your belongings away and you'll do great!
Review: Get rid of stereo equipment, NEVER use refrigerator magnets! Come on.. a great designer will tell you that you can improve the look and feel of your home without sacrificing your belongings! Lauri Ward is not a great designer! I am an interior designer and more importantly, a mother. Your refrigerator looks beautiful with your child's paintings on it. Hung with, yes.. magnets! If you enjoy listening to music, why would you get ride of your speakers because some half-wit "professional designer" tells you it looks bad? Your home is still your home. While you want it to be warm and inviting, you still want it to be functional for the way you live. This can be done without spending a fortune! Just look for what attracts YOU. Your style, your favorite things. No one wants to live in a home that is always ready for a magazine cover. You want to live in a home that reflects who you are and that makes your family and guests feel at home. Save your money; don't buy this book!
Rating: 
Summary: Fun, fast, and really, really fun!!
Review: I hate most of my furniture!But, since I'm not ready to go out and buy new things, I'm doomed to living with what I have for the time being.
The other day however, I was in the bookstore and picked up Ms. Ward's book. I just loved it!! I went home and set myself to work on my apartment, correcting her ten common decorating mistakes and changing my home. The principles she uses are straightforward and easy to understand, as well as being a quick and easy read, and although at first I missed having those beautiful glossy color photos, I soon realized that the lack thereof helped me to concentrate on dealing with the things I had, not dreaming of new things that I could buy (but never would). I changed the whole look of my apartment in one evening, and I didnt have to buy anything. Although I still hate some of my furniture, it made my whole apartment look better and feel so much more comfortable.
Rating:
Summary: The Most Useful Decorating Book I Own
Review: I have dozens of decorating books. Most of them feature a particular style or document the decorating characteristics of a foreign country. These books are beautiful and fun to read. Unfortunately they have not been very helpful in decorating my own Manhattan shoebox apartment. This book, however, is a noteable exception. The pictures are all black and white, and some of them are slightly fuzzy. But the text is very clear. I have been trying for at least a decade to get my furniture arranged correctly. It is now perfect, thanks to the very simple instructions in this book. And my art is hung correctly, my lighting is both functional and attractive, and I am comfortable in my own home. When people come to visit for the first time, they frequently say, "Wow! Who decorated this place?" All the credit goes to Lauri Ward, who has addressed a real need. If you want to look at pretty pictures, this is not the book for you. But if you want to carefully analyse your rooms and figure out how to make them look wonderful using mainly items you already own, this is the book for you.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Investment for Home Decorators
Review: I haven't read all the 100+ reviews already written for this book, so my apologies if I point out things that have already been said.
My favorite thing about this book is that it's straight-to-the-point and simple. Ward doesn't waste our time with unnecessary descriptions and adjectives (i.e. "...the velvety fabric drapes sumptuously over the chair adding a dramatic look"). Instead, she lists and explains the 10 design principles that most designers use (but don't tell us) in books and magazines. In cookbook-format, Ward focuses on topics such as placing furniture in a way that achieves balance and cohesiveness. Among other tips, she explains the rules for creating a focal point, minimizing a "rollercoaster" effect, arranging wall art, and displaying decorative objects and collections. Although, she mainly uses living room areas to explain her design principles, they can be applied to every room; but she also includes a few pages of tips for each room in the house.
Photos of before-and-after rooms are presented in black & white. I really think this was a great idea, because you can see the layout problems and solutions more clearly. I think that color photos would have taken away from that. For both Before and After rooms, a photo and floor plan of each are presented to show the differences. I also liked the little sidebar quizzes in which you look at the before photo and try to pick out the design problems.
The furniture in the room examples may not be that appealing, but they DO look like furniture used in most typical middle-class homes. I like that because it makes the book seem so unpretentious. Ward doesn't give off that snobby designer impression; instead, she seems down-to-earth and in touch with those who don't live in mansions and spend $52,000 on a bed.
I have to comment on one last thing: There's a small section for women on handling the "decorating-phobic" men in their lives. From her experience over the years, she has found that men tend to resist change and that as long as it's functional, they don't usually care what it looks like. So Ward has a little section titled "Here's What You Can Do", and then offers up a scheme to get your man to cooperate. I just think that was so funny and cute! Probably because I can relate. My husband has shirts in his closet from the 90's and REFUSES to part with them, then complains that he doesn't have enough closet space. Anyway...
I don't give many books 5 stars, but it is well-deserved. I refer to it often and have about 18 sticky notes in it, along with the underlined and highlighted passages. I continue to buy the beautiful designer books and magazines for ideas and inspiration, but now (proudly) when I look at a photo I can see the design principles at work and how the "look" was achieved.
Rating: 
Summary: Dissappointment...
Review: I ordered two books to read on interior rearrangement; I needed some guidelines to follow. The first book was this one, and the other book was "Decorating for Good:.." by Carole Talbot - a far better book. I like to attack things from a logical set of rules and this book does not offer it. Caroles book offers a set of guidelines to lead you in a direction that is flexible, but has a strong underlying foundation. I read Caroles book first and I loved it,but I was totally dissappointed after reading this one. Too constrictive and opinionated. The pictures are good, but you have to figure it out for yourself, how she came about the solutions she did.
Rating: 
Summary: A quick read that really accomplishes quite a bit.
Review: I read this book in one evening and couldn't wait to make changes the next day. We just moved into a smaller home and I was having quite a problem arranging the furniture in my dining room. In one afternoon I was able to use Lauri Ward's concepts and arrange it - and the results are wonderful! There were so many decorating suggestions that have helped me in other areas - size of art over the sofa, height of lamps in living and bedrooms, the use of pairs, what to do when you have a tall item, and collections. I felt the use of black and white photos helped to keep the book timeless, as color trends change so often. I was disappointed towards the end of the book as not enough was said about accessorizing, such as placement, shapes, sizes, and texture. Also, it bothered me that most completed rooms were carbon copies of each other - in other words, no individuality. The book can be restrictive too - there are a lot of "musts". I still feel that for the new decorator this book is a must-have. It really gets to the point. You will look at your rooms with new eyes and realize just what you need to do to make them right.
Rating:
Summary: Ten Stars
Review: If I could have given this book ten stars, I would have. Christopher Lowell and his Seven Layers of Design should have taken a page from Laurie Ward's excellent book which was practical, easy to read and sensible. The "before and after" pictures of a variety of rooms helped greatly. She was right -- in less than 1/2 hour, using her principles I transformed my crowded, awkwardly-arrange living room into a beautiful and stunning arrangement that encourages conversation and looks much larger at the same time.
This book really helps in that the design principles are adaptable and applicable to any size room or home and really gives you concrete ideas to use in creating comfortable and beautifully arranged living spaces. Brava Laurie and thanks!
Rating:
Summary: Timeless advice--a real rarity for a decorating book!
Review: Reading a decorating book is a little like reading a glossy fashion magazine. Often the spreads look beautiful, but you can't apply them to your own lifestyle because the goods are too expensive, too impractical, and too trendy. Everything will look dated in a few years, much of it isn't functional, yet costs a bundle. This book transcends that problem by giving easy-to-follow advice about furniture placement. It's kind of like secular Feng Shui. The focus is on making a home that is comfortable,functions well, and looks balanced. Ward sums it all up in a list of principles that can be applied to ANY home, on any budget, all in a very short time frame. The before and after photos are very helpful, even in black and white. Ward is also a great teacher. She seems to really want her readers to start developing their own sense of proportion and flow. She doesn't just tell you what's wrong with each room, she adds clues to the 'before' photos to help you really examine the room and notice the crucial features that are throwing things off balance. Aside from the general principles, she does include a few notions that might irk some readers (no art in the bedroom, place the pillows on your couch with the points up). But these are few and easy to ignore, and readers shouldn't let it detract from the main thrust of the book. I checked this book out of the library, along with lots of the oversized, glossy, single-name decorator books, but I can tell even now that this is the only one I'm going to want to buy it eventually.
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