Rating: 
Summary: Love the variety
Review: Thank you for this book, which offers me a look at so many different styles, rooms, furnishings, colors, home types, budgets. It's so hard to find a decorating book these days that isn't focused on one style or one writer's point of view. I'm tired of being dictated to! This book gives me a wide range of choices and teaches me about decorating so I can MAKE MY OWN DECISIONS and do my own thing.
Rating: 
Summary: Poor picture selection
Review: I was excited to get this book after reading favorable reviews via amazon.com. However, I was disappointed once I got it in my hands. Pictures which should present an essence of a decorating book, are stuffed with cacophony of colors and styles, without any specific design in mind. From more than 400 pages of photographs only two pages are exposed in an aesthetic manner (257, 298). Majority of the book is a mish-mash of nothing and everything. After seeing poor pictures, I did not care to bother to read the text (there was no spacing between chapter title rows; letters run into each other, making it hard to read.) I would not advise buying this book and I am returning it to amazon.com. for a full refund.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent, must have decorator book
Review: This book is wonderful, and I refer to it often. It has many great pictures and will give any reader a ton of inspirational ideas. A truly great reference book. I would recommend it to anyone who loves to decorate.
Rating:
Summary: Great ideas and excellent color pictures !
Review: I have looked high and low for a good, all-around decorating book that wasn't too expensive and that had COLOR pictures !! This was it ! They even give you a template, instructions and graph paper for room arranging !! I am a first-time home buyer and I NEEDED good, inexpensive ideas to decorate. This book was the EXACT thing that I had been searching for 2 months for. It is almost better than tearing your favorite ideas from all of you home magazines !! This book has it all !!!
Rating:
Summary: An excellent source of on-going inspiration and ideas!
Review: As an amature decorator with an extensive library, this book continually stands out as my favorite. It provided great ideas the first time I read it over a year ago, and continues to inspire each time I return to it (unlike many others on my shelves that have grown tired). The pictures are beautiful, reflect many different decorating styles, and present them in realistic ways that make it easy to translate to one's own home. I'm on-line buying another one today, since I gave my own beautiful, hardcover copy away as a Housewarming gift for a fellow decorating buff!
Rating: 
Summary: It's YOUR Home
Review: FROM THE BOOK'S INTRODUCTION: Growing up in suburban St. Louis, I had my feet (and psyche) firmly planted in our beloved farmhouse with its fields, orchards, and shade trees. I adored the place and the peace and privacy of its setting. But what I didn't understand until later was the extent to which my sense of home as an adult was being shaped by the sounds and images of those early years. I cozied my first apartment in the city with familiar elements: an old wicker chair, overflowing bookshelves, an Oriental rug, and, of course, a cat. Today in the home I share with my husband, Ron (and four cats), it's no surprise that I gravitate to our second floor with its low knee walls and vaulted ceilings--happy reminders of my snug childhood bedroom. Even some room arrangements hint at the past. A friendly cloverleaf of Adirondack chairs in our year-round porch recalls a similar grouping from our backyard in the 1950s. And when I sit at my bay window desk today and look out into the woods, I feel the same contentment that I knew as a child when I sat in another windowed nook overlooking a different stand of trees. Whatever their style, the most inviting rooms always start inside someone's heart. Decorating, you see, isn't really about decorating at all; it's about creating a home that nurtures and relaxes you by reflecting who you are and what you love. Think for a moment about the things that have shaped your vision of what a home should be. Maybe it's a bedroom hideaway lovingly recalled from your own childhood, a screened porch where you rocked away an afternoon at a vacation lodge, your grandmother's dining room where the family gathered every Thanksgiving--or a room you may only have visited in your daydreams. By conjuring up images of such favorite places, real or imagined, you can cut through the sometimes confusing array of decorating choices, avoid being swayed by mere fads, and, instead, develop truly personal settings that will always please your eye and speak to your soul. As you thumb through the pages of The New Decorating Book, we'll give you the decorating help and inspiration--but you have to bring the dreams. After all, it's YOUR home.
Rating:
Summary: Tells you what the pros know
Review: This is my decorating "bible." It obviously features the work of top designers around the country, but then it tells you what they know about how to put a room together. By explaining those decorating principles and ideas, this book has empowered me to transform first my living room and currently our bedroom. My friends keep asking me what designer I hired. My "designer" is this book, which cost me under $25. This is a real bargain and filled with classic yet updated style. Like the book, the rooms it will help you create will last for years.
Rating:
Summary: A superior interior design guide...
Review: It may have had seven predecessors, but as of the eighth iteration (as designer guides go) I would say that Better Homes and Gardens' "New Decorating Book" has reached the state of the art. No weekend home transformation warrior's library would be complete without this guide.Lovely to look at and overflowing with fashion forward advice, "New Design Book" combines several design help books into one. Advertising itself as a "4-in-1" deal, this authoritative tome features: 1. A Dream Book - How can you not dream with hundreds of envy-inspiring photos ripe with a variety of styles of that will set your mind a-wanderin'? 2. A Workbook - Tired of just dreaming? This guide will help you put it all into play. 3. A Room-by-Room Decorating Planner - The layout features one section of the typical house at a time, focusing your projects. Step-by-step instructions get you up and going. 4. A Design Primer - Don't know tan from taupe? The design primer give you the basics that every interior designer knows by heart. Color, harmony, symmetry - it's all here. At well over four hundred pages and plenty of advice amid the numerous pictures, this is one of those books that will takes weeks to go through. The text isn't lost in the graphics, though. The book is jammed full of helpful instructions. There are "Do's and Don't's", side-by-side before and after pictures, comparison shots of multiple interpretations of themes, and the latest advice on textures, do-it-yourself projects, and even URLs to the leading edge designs updated daily at Better Homes and Gardens' website. Better Homes and Gardens not only excelled with their advice, but the quality of the book itself makes it practically worthy of coffee table book status. A few of the best aspects of the book's own design are: * A thoughtful and well conceived layout.
* An excellent graphic design that highlights rather than distracts from text and images.
* A superb use of color throughout the text focuses the readers attention on details. I recently reviewed Michael Payne's first design book and I must say that it pales in comparison to this one. Simply loaded with information, "New Design Book" sets a high mark that other books would be hard pressed to match. No single review can do justice to the outstanding quality, sheer helpfulness, and up-to-date stylings found in this guide. After spending several days engrossed in it, I'm not certain it has any real weaknesses. A must have. This one deservedly gets five stars.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent source for beginners
Review: After looking at LOTS of "how to" decorating books, this one was by far the most useful. It provided the incentive and direction I needed to tackle (with confidence) the rooms in my house that needed attention. Unlike other books, this one doesn't just spout out a bunch of rules w/little explanation. Instead, the author helps you figure out what YOUR style is and then helps you achieve that look in any given room. There is even help for those who have trouble defining their style at all (and fall in the "eclectic" category). Believe it or not, "eclectic" isn't as haphazard as it sounds and the author describes how to be consistent with that look without ever being boring. The author also makes you re-think the true uses of each room and helps you decorate accordingly. One of the added bonuses of this book is also the number of big, beautiful photos on every page which will help you both define your style and give you ideas. I Really can't say enough about this one - truly 5 stars!
Rating:
Summary: Very good book!
Review: I really recommend this book, because it's easy to find your own decorating style in it. The book includes a very helpfull test in which you can discover the best decoration style for you , based on your personality (formal, sleek, etc).
The photographs are very good and it contains information about colour, fabrics, ilumination and other very important issues to consider when you want to decorate a room.
It has modern decorating ideas combined with good taste and common sense. Very good!
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