Product Description

Alexandra Stoddard continues her creative and insightful guidance by showing us how to make our homes a real expression of our true selves. Starting with the Fifteen Defining Principles of Interior Design, Stoddard grounds us in the classic standards that make any home timeless and follows with inventive suggestions. Her own bold ideas about color, pattern, and texture are affordable tips from her own vast experience involving every imaginable decoration problem. From lighting a room to adding fabrics, furnishings, and the perfect finishing touches, she offers her expertise while always encouraging us to listen to our inner voice for the final answer.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1749661 in Books
• Published on: 1999-10-07
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 1.17" h x 7.56" w x 9.34" l, 2.08 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 512 pages

From Amazon.com
Alexandra Stoddard has reinterpreted and restated for a late-20th-century audience the basis of Edith Wharton's and Ogden Codman Jr.'s 1897 The Decoration of Houses, then a groundbreaking book. Stoddard's approach to interior design is sensitive, holistic, practical, and thorough, building a solid aesthetic on classical design principles. Readable and appealing, the book offers a thoughtful analysis of the intersection of architecture with personal style, interspersed with concrete and sensible suggestions for the decoration and use of floors, walls, furniture, and storage space. As in Stoddard's other books, her warm personality comes through on every page. (You have to love a woman who says, "Most rooms are improved by the presence of books.... A house with many books is a house with many mansions.")

From Library Journal
Each of these books gives a different view of some of the major issues in home decorating. Interior designer Hanby-Robie has written an easy-to-read workbook to be used by the do-it-yourselfer. She discusses furniture, wall and window treatments, fabrics, flooring, interior design accessories, and planning. For all topics she never advocates a particular style but gives practical advice to enable consumers to make knowledgeable home-decorating choices. Landis, a contributing editor to Metropolitan Home, takes a "helpful hints" approach to interior design, much like Leslie Linsley does in her 15-Minute Decorating Ideas (LJ 5/15/97). The "workable (and) designer-tested" tips are divided into chapters for topics such as color, windows, and display. Appendixes provide information on hiring an interior designer and a helpful list of mail-order resources for home furnishings. Stoddard, the interior designer and much-published writer, updates Edith Wharton and Ogden Codman's classic The Decoration of Houses, first published 100 years ago. More style conscious and less tip-oriented than the authors of the other two books, she gives her own comprehensive interpretation of how to decorate a home in the last years of the 20th century. All three titles would be excellent, broad-interest additions to every public library.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Ingram
In 1897, Edith Wharton and architect Ogden Codman, Jr., collaborated on a groundbreaking book on the art of interior design titled The Decoration of Houses. Now renowned decorator Alexandra Stoddard gives us her version of decorating houses for today's world and as an expression of our own personalities. Line drawings. 2-color text.