The Decorating Book

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Examples
Review: The illustrations alone are worth the price of this book. The author shows a series of rooms, and each room is shown decorated with three different schemes. It clearly shows how different floor coverings, colors, and furniture change the look and feel of a room.

Rating:
Summary: illustrated history of design styles
Review: This book was probably already looking dated when it came out in 1981. The first half of the book help you if you are looking for RETRO 60's and 70's interior layouts and home accessories.

Where this book ROCKS is in its 150 pages of APPENDIXED History of Design illustrations. This section deserves to be reprinted and given the respect it is due. Thoughtful, beautiful, informative and timeless, the appendix to this book makes it worth its space on a designers bookshelf.
(The first half to this book gets One star,
The second half to this book gets Five Stars)

Rating:
Summary: illustrated history of design styles
Review: This book was probably already looking dated when it came out in 1981. The first half of the book help you if you are looking for RETRO 60's and 70's interior layouts and home accessories.

Where this book ROCKS is in its 150 pages of APPENDIXED History of Design illustrations. This section deserves to be reprinted and given the respect it is due. Thoughtful, beautiful, informative and timeless, the appendix to this book makes it worth its space on a designers bookshelf.
(The first half to this book gets One star,
The second half to this book gets Five Stars)

Rating:
Summary: Good direction, but dated styling...
Review: When buying a book on interior decorating, make sure to check out the year the book was originally published. If you want the newest trends in a certain style, get a recently published book. This book, while full of information, held little in the way of pictorial inspiration or unique ideas. It's kind of an old book- it reminded me very much of the soaps my parents used to watch in the 80's. My recommendation would be to steer clear of this one and get Mary Gilliatt's Interior Design Course. Much more (updated) info, more pictures, and a lot of inspiration.