Product Description

The new budget-smart approach to home decorating that's captured hearts--and beautified homes--all across America!

Lauri Ward, the acclaimed "Use-What-You-Have" decorator, as ween on "Oprah" (three appearances), "CBS This Morning," The Fox Network, HGTV, Lifetime, and CNBC; featured in The New York Times, Ladies' Home Journal, Newsday, Washington Post, House Beautiful, Woman's Day, Metropolitan Home, McCall's, New York magazine, Decorating & Remodeling

Transform your home without traumatizing your bank account...using the space you have, the things you like, and the budget you choose.

"Lauri Ward...demystifies the decorating process with ten simple principles that take the guesswork out of common decorating dilemmas." --Good Housekeeping

Lauri Ward has created a revolution in interior design--the most accessible and affordable approach to decorating ever. Now she shows you how to do it yourself--quickly identifying the ten most common decorating mistakes, offering simple principles to correct them, and giving you a proven system for making your home look better than you dreamed it could. Filled with dramatic before-and-after photos, this guide will let you in on Lauri Ward's "clever, quick, and inexpensive ways to breathe life back into every room in your house" (McCall's).

"Ward's specialty [is] turning ho-hum interiors into inspired spaces without undertaking bank-breaking shopping sprees." --Ladies' Home Journal

* Includes real before-and-after photographs and explicit information on what was banished, borrowed, or bought to effect their transformation
* Reveals "the ten most common decorating errors" (and, of course, how to fix them)
* Ideal for the budget-conscious and the "impulse decorator" who's in search of a new look

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #88748 in Books
• Published on: 2002-01-11
• Released on: 2002-01-11
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

From Amazon.com
Finally, finally, a practical home-decorating book for the reader who is not a millionaire! Rather than call in a professional design consultant to tell you which walls "must go" and throwing out everything you own in favor of new and expensive designer fabrics, furniture, and fixtures, Ward starts with what you already have and makes dramatic transformations by arrangement, use of color, and a few inexpensive additions of objects or materials. Her idea is to use what you already have and like, and operate on a budget you can afford to make your home more satisfying and aesthetically pleasing to you without being a slave to passing trends, fads, and radical transformations that end up making you feel like a stranger in your own home.

Among the many tips and guidelines, Ward starts with the top 10 decorating mistakes that professionals all know about, but that anyone can recognize and fix. She covers diagnosing problems that jar the eyes, offers suggestions on items to banish and others to borrow from elsewhere in the home to create more visual appeal, talks about how to shop for furniture that will work with what you already own, offers tips for new homeowners and people just starting out to make older furniture work in new spaces, and covers the kinds of dramatic improvements possible through the use of the right artwork, accessories, and lighting. This is a great gift book for newlyweds, new homeowners, or anyone interested in creative, lively home decorating without breaking the bank. --Mark A. Hetts

From Library Journal
Ward, founder of Use What You Have Interiors, shares her ten design considerations, such as making a comfortable conversation area, identifying a room's focal point, and using light correctly, for transforming homes into livable, attractive spaces. She devotes a chapter to each of these principles with before-and-after pictures of clients' homes, identifying what the problems are and how to correct them. In each case, she includes a list of what was eliminated, borrowed from other rooms, or bought. Focusing on living and dining rooms, Ward concludes with a brief discussion of kitchens, bathrooms, and bedrooms. Never advocating a particular style, except for an uncluttered look, her book will be a practical purchase for public libraries.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Can you carry on a decent living-room conversation without screaming? Do the accessories in your dining room make you wince? You need the one-day decorator, who--as created and popularized by Ward--scrutinizes, diagnoses, and moves furniture and accessories to create more harmonious spaces in just 24 hours or less! In these pages, then, are how-to summaries, along with nearly 25 before-and-after stories and photographs. All information is clustered around the 10 most common decorating mistakes, from creation of a bad conversation area to incorrect use of lighting. Each cluster includes illustrations of right and wrong; a list of what was banished, borrowed, or bought; a "to-do" checklist or two; and personal tales and hints that illuminate her principles. Anyone for joining a "destroy the doilies" club? Good information, packaged in logical fashion and helpful to readers for turning their homes into something suitable for House Beautiful. Barbara Jacobs

Customer Reviews

Great book! For anyone who wonders why something won't work
I am not a decorator by nature.

I'm constantly frustrated by decorating magazines, TV shows, and friends with the decorating gene who babble on about breaking "the rules" as if a person like me knew what "the rules" were in the first place.

Before you can successfully break rules, you have to know what they are in the first place.

All these decorator types had me frustrated and angry. They knew something, but were either unwilling or unable to share their ability to make stuff work.

Laughing off a serious question about placement or colour choice with "go with your gut instinct-- it's OK to break the rules" doesn't work if your gut instinct consistently leads you in the wrong direction.

I can singlehandedly prove to any designer born, that you CAN'T successfully "break the rules" at all times. I have made more than my share of mistakes that leaves my decorator friends stunned in disbelief that ANYONE could DO that!!!!

NOW I'm happy!

Lauri Ward's 2 books, this one and her second one TOLD ME THE RULES!!!

NOW I KNOW WHY SOME ROOMS WORK AND OTHERS DEFINITELY DON'T.

All I needed was someone to explain it. Lauri did.

I highly recommend both books.

I really don't care if some decorator types don't like people finding out the rules, or feel that someone like me will slavishly produce vanilla bland spaces.

This is a book about sharing decorating tools, showing people how it works, then expecting them to go off and make their own stuff look better in their own place.

BTW it's not about colour. It's all about placing furniture in a room to make it serene, calm and pleasing.

People who know the rules instinctively might not care for this book but for the rest of us who keep saying HUNH??? this book is for you and me.

It's going to give us the edge to put a room together and have it look good enough that our decorating friends will back off and quit giving us that pitying look.

For colour and life and so forth, I recommend the Pottery Barn books, they are great. I also recommend Dylan Landis's book Elegant and Easy Rooms which I also like for the paint "recipes" for rooms that work.

Have Furniture? You Need This Book!
This book saves the day for anyone who has been moving their furniture around and has never been able to get it right. It shows common mistakes and how to fix them quickly. No need to buy lots of new things. Even after everything looks great, this book is so handy for reference. When questions crops up about lighting, displaying art or making new purchases, it has all the answers. Your copy will get dog-earred too!

Instant Decorating for Every Budget
If there is one book every home decorator needs it is this. Without spending thousands of dollars (okay, I spent nothing!), I gave my home a fabulous makeover. Lauri Ward, the author, recommends reading the entire book and then rereading, which helped me have a better overall idea of what my mistakes were so that I was able to pinpoint them quickly, before I started moving things around.
This book will probably make you ask yourself "why didn't I think of that before?" Fortunately, Ms. Ward, the pioneer of the "one day decorating" concept did and she provides the secrets for us novices and pros too who want to learn how they can do it .