Cottage Style

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Summary: Best Book on Cottage Style
Review: This book is jam packed with gorgeous pictures and ideas. I never realized how many different expressions of Cottage Style there is. It helped me to fine tune the specific cottage style that was right for me. I personally was turned off by anything cutesy but found that cottage style needn't be cutesy at all...if you don't like that look. Nor does it have to look old and antiquey. Most books on decorating I read from the library. This one I had to own. It is a reference that I will use over and over as I 'tweak' my decor year after year.

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Summary: A happy discovery.
Review: This book is one of those happy little discoveries. It's empowering me to make my home "happy" and a lot more fun. I saw the author on a Christopher Lowell rerun and jotted down the book's name, which I promptly forgot. But then I walked into the bookstore and came face to face with the same book on a display, so I knew I had to buy it. It's my decorating fate! This book defines various cottage looks, all the while talking about how to use those colors, furnishings, fabrics, and so on to turn your home into a cottage getaway. An interesting approach. I want to escape when I go home, so I am using this book as one of my guides in creating that "great escape" look in the suburbs. What I love is that my husband is getting into it, too. He talks about going away to his "cottage" on the weekends. This book doesn't focus on kitsch or clutter (but it did help me organize the teapots I collect) but on creating a look that can make a home seem like a farmhouse or a log house or a nautical seashore cottage in simple, tasteful ways.

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Summary: I never put this romantic book away
Review: This book stays on my coffee table because I use it all the time. It has changed my life because I've used it to cozy up every room in our home. It's made me fall in love with my home. I love the ideas that are shown in the pictures but really like the simple tips that the writer has emphasized which let me add romantic cottage touches to what I already own. I looked at other cottage books but they seemed too much about architecture or about rooms from Europe that don't look like my suburban home. This book has shown me that I can have a cottage wherever I live.

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Summary: Look at the gorgeous photos but overlook the graphic design
Review: This book, which I recently purchased, is beautiful to look at and wonderful to read. It's loaded with photos, ideas and decorating advice. The fact that all kinds of cottage styles are represented is important to me. I think one of the earlier reviewers who thought the book was busy was misled by the way the book is designed. As an art major, I did find that the graphic design IS busy. But for me that is a minor complaint.

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Summary: Helped define exact style I want
Review: This is the first interior Design book that I actually purchased & I thought it was well worth the price. It gave a broad overview of various "cottage style" interiors - everything from rustic cabin to English garden cottage to plain American farm house. I was able to get a much more focused idea of the look that I want to achieve. I'm taking this book with me while shopping for a few new furniture pieces in the next 12-18 months and I think it may have prevented a costly mistake.

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Summary: This isn't a book - it's an anti-depressant!
Review: This is the ultimate springtime redecorating book. It'll get you out of your winter doldrums and deep into planning how to freshen up your rooms. This isn't a book, it's an anti-depressant! Fresh and happy and springy and cozy all at the same time and packed with one idea after another.

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Summary: I guess I'm cutesy!
Review: Uh oh -- I loved Cottage Style so I guess that makes me cutesy, according to the previous reviewer. I wrote one of the positive reviews earlier, because the book encouraged me to make this little place of mine the cottage I'd always dreamed of. Yes, my sofa is chintz, my walls are white-painted paneling, and lace curtains flutter at my windows, blown by the breezes off the ocean. If that's cute, than what's the problem?

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Summary: Wonderfully charming, unpretentious, and helpful
Review: Where we live, a lot of people have second homes. That isn't possible for us right now, but this book, Cottage Style, is helping me give our suburban house that weekend-house look. At first, I thought cottage style was just one decorating look, but it isn't. It includes LOTS of looks (farmhouse, Adirondack, and so on) with one thing in common: giving any home that "getaway feeling," as the author explains. The book is just great. I'm planning right now on how to turn our family room into the northwoods "cabin" that my husband and I have always wanted. Another winner from the Better Homes and Gardens people.