Product Description

How do you make a home a haven? Whether your ideal is a romantic bedroom accented by softly luxurious accessories, an adventurous living room filled with vibrant throws and colorful pillows, or a serene dining room layered with pure white linens and cream-colored table settings, the space should be a clear and vivid reflection of you--incorporating your treasures, your passions, and the many aspects of your personality.

National design expert Chris Madden understands that comfortable, beautiful rooms start from within, taking into account the feeling you want a room to elicit, how you envision using your space, and the fact that spending time in your home must be a sensual and fulfilling experience for all its occupants, a haven that embraces the five senses.

Using the insights gained from two decades of design experience, Chris Madden has designed a simple, creative road map for decorating cozy, welcoming spaces that nurture and restore. Chris helps us to discover and explore our own design personality--whether Adventurous, Romantic, or Serene--and presents these three distinctive styles in a variety of settings.

Each style is broken down into its most basic elements, including texture and color, so anyone can create the stylish
looks. A list of essentials for each, including a guide to the perfect accessories, fabrics, and surface treatments, plus furniture suggestions, helpful color palettes, and ways to indulge the five senses form a detailed guide for creating the ultimate oasis.

For the romantic at heart, imagine gingham-checked sheets, a cotton summer slipcover on an easy chair, thick fringe on a curtain, or a cut crystal bowl. Adventurous decorators will learn how to display their eclectic collections and create excitement with lush velvets and silks mixed with animal prints and vibrant colors. For those who seek a sense of calm in their homes, a serene space in creamy neutrals, filled with clean-lined furniture and flooded with natural light, creates a rejuvenating haven. Photographs of dozens of extraordinary rooms will inspire any decorator, whether his or her tastes favor simplicity or detailed exuberance.

Chris Madden’s practical, stylish, and comfortable designs have motivated millions to create spaces that are both beautiful and deeply personal. With Haven: Finding the Keys to Your Personal Decorating Style, she encourages everyone to decorate rooms that reflect the people who create and enjoy them.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1065396 in Books
• Released on: 2004-05-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 160 pages

From Publishers Weekly
According to the host of Madden, HGTV's Interiors by Design, a "decorating fear factor" prevents many people from creating the home of their dreams. In this invitingly straightforward book, she sets out to demystify the process of decorating a home for everyone from design enthusiasts to those she refers to as "decorator-challenged." Finding a personal style is the key, the author advises, and in the introduction she identifies three broad style categories: romantic, adventurous and serene (readers can take a quiz to find out which one best characterizes their taste). Madden then analyzes the elements of each style by showcasing romantic, adventurous and serene rooms and including helpful sidebars that instruct readers on "How to get this look." The tone throughout is warm and upbeat: though Madden's clearly passionate about good design, she is able to convey her opinions on style without resorting to bossiness. Readers who find design books intimidating might be charmed by the author's story about how she chose her career after being berated and bullied by a high-profile design consultant: the lesson she learned is that personal taste is paramount, and that "If you love something, you can make it work in a room." Though it feels a bit simplistic at times, Madden's three-style rubric works surprisingly well at creating rooms with a unified, balanced look. Tips on the use of color and texture round out a volume that is both practical and pleasing to look at.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author
Chris Madden is the bestselling author of A Room of Her Own, Kitchens, Bathrooms, Chris Madden's Guide to Personalizing Your Home, Getaways, Bedrooms, and most recently, New American Living Rooms. She is the host of HGTV’s Interiors by Design, has been design correspondent for The Oprah Winfrey Show, and has made frequent appearances on Today and Good Morning America. She also writes a syndicated weekly column that reaches more than 360 newspapers. Chris is the spokesperson for JCPenney Home and the creator of the Chris Madden Collection for JCPenney Home, which features furnishings for every room in the house.

Customer Reviews

Old news
There is nothing new here, and what is here is a mess when it comes to how the book is organized. The author (and I admit I don't know who she is) doesn't seem to know what she's talking about because her style categories are ill defined, so the book comes off as an anything-but-helpful mishmash of pretty rooms. If you want real decorating help, keep looking.

Good for true beginning decorators
Many people are familiar with Chris Madden's work by now, particularly if they are Oprah fans or pay any attention to the style world. If so, this book won't be much help in refining or defining their personal decorating style. However, if the thought of decorating your home space is overwhelming, if your rooms look like a mish-mash of things that likely shouldn't be there, this will help you sort through what you are drawn to, and make better long-range decisions in purchasing furniture, paint, and the trickiest part for most people, what to include (and edit out) in accessories to "make a mood" in your home.

My biggest gripe about this book is that each category she defines--Romantic, Adventurous, and Serene--have more overlap than not. Her "Adventurous" bedroom is more romantic than not, and many of the "Romantic" rooms fit into the Serene category, based on her definitions of color and texture. This is fine for those of us who don't like labels, and who shift between categories without getting all worked up over decorating principles. Yet, if you're not confident in your skills and are looking for solid advice, this will be completely confusing. All the more reason to not take this, nor any book of decorating tips, too seriously. Homes are meant to be lived in, and the best advice anyone can give--which Ms. Madden has always done--is to go with what you love, edit out what you don't, and keep looking at pictures and products to keep your ideas fresh and away from looking like a set period piece or junkyard!

I haven't read this book yet.... but
I can't wait to read it!!! I think she is just FAB... and I'm sure I'll get tons out of it!
*RAH*