Product Description

This guide to decorating your home offers stylish living ranges from medieval to contemporary and from Japanese minimalism to Mexican exuberance. The author defines each style and shows how to achieve the look, from flooring to furnishings.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1277288 in Books
• Published on: 2000-05-11
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
You couldn't possibly cram any more into just over 200 squishy pages of this soft back. The Ultimate Home Style Guide runs through 25 interior styles, divided into historical and global. So dense is it, that there's even a guide on how to use the book.

Anyone looking for a crash course on every conceivable interior style, either to impress a date working in the interiors world, or for a job interview with an interiors company, will take to this. If you're vaguely familiar with the 50s or 60s look, but aren't sure about the difference between Georgian and Victorian, if you vaguely know Art Nouveau, but can't remember whether Arts and Crafts came after or before, this clarifies the details. And if you take for granted global looks such as Moroccan and Indian, but are curious about others such as Russian, Scandinavian and Caribbean, this is a good starting point.

Most useful, in fact, are the various summaries in each chapter, from the introductory bold paragraph, the brief on creating the look and the final summing up. Overstyled photography labours the points for each look, to the extent that some (such as the Mediterranean) are even unrecognisable from the authentic version. --Lorna V

Amazon.co.uk Review
The Ultimate Home Style Guide is the perfect book for those setting out to redecorate a room in a period house or for those facing the daunting task of decorating a room totally lacking in character. Katherine Sorrell, the features editor of Homes & Gardens magazine, has divided the book into historical and global styles. The historical styles include chapters on mediaeval, Tudor, Victorian, art nouveau, art deco, through to the sixties and contemporary. The global styles include English country, French chic, Scandinavian, Indian, and Shaker. Each chapter contains a brief history of how the style evolved as materials and fashion changed. The work of famous decorators in each period is described and examples of different rooms epitomising the style are photographed. Sorrell carefully explains how to go about creating the look, detailing the wall, floor, and lighting treatments. Accurate colour charts, pictures of fabric swatches, and descriptions of soft furnishing, furniture and accessories are included. Each chapter has a handy "summing up the style" page with a photograph of a typical room which shows how all the elements described are put together. If you long to saturate your flat with the colours and textures of a Moroccan bazaar, or dine under a glittering chandelier in a fantasy Baroque-style dining room, now is your chance, as never before has there been such breadth of choice or freedom from convention in house decoration.