6 Must-Read Interior Design Books For Beginners
You’ve seen the pictures, been inspired by the shows, and drawn up a plan for precisely how you want your home to look – but you’ve no idea where to start.Interior design can be a daunting prospect to throw yourself into if you’re a beginner. So when you’re jumping into the deep end, make sure you’ve got a strong lifeline to help you out. These six interior design books for beginners are perfect for those just starting out in the world of design. Check them out and see how they can help you create the look you’ve been searching for.
- Love Your Home: A Beginner’s Guide to Interior Design – Lucy Smith
Start with the basics before you try anything more complicated. Lucy Smith worked for Real Homes magazine and specialises in writing about homes, interiors, and decorating trends. Smith is the perfect gatekeeper into the world of interior design, and her book will guide you through everything from creating your first mood board to choosing a colour scheme. Love Your Home is a practical guide to the basics of interior design. It explains how to develop your ideas through to fruition. The book explains the basic principles from scratch in easy and accessible language, and describes how to maintain functionality within a highly designed space.
- Living Modern: The Source book of Contemporary Interiors – Richard Powers & Phyllis Richardson
This is surely destined to be this generation’s interiors bible. Describing ‘modern’ as being much more than simply ‘modernist’, Living Modern showcases clean lines, elegant colour combinations, indoor-outdoor relationships, and open areas for lounging, cooking, and dining. Living Modern has hundreds of photographs drawn from stylish residences around the world. With designs from Brazil, California, Scandinavia, and Australia, the book has a comprehensive index of designers and architects, and a full directory of stockists. This is ideal for someone searching for the inspiration needed to create a stylish and contemporary interior.
- Domino: The Book of Decorating: A Room-by-Room Guide to Creating a Home That Makes You Happy – Deborah Needleman
A straightforward, room-by-room chapter structure lays out all the secrets to creating a truly beautiful home. With inspiring images, how-to-advice, and insiders’ secrets, Needleman has created an indispensable style manual. The chapters explore real, furnished rooms and these images are annotated to explain how the space has been created. The homes featured in Domino explore how to create a style based on the way real people live, with scavenged and inherited pieces, and reveal how to solve the practical problems of interior design.
- Decorate: 1,000 Design Ideas for Every Room in Your Home – Holly Becker & Joanna Copestick
Some of the world’s top interior designers and leading decor experts (including Kelly Wearstler, Amy Butler, and Jonathan Adler) have come together to share over a thousand professional tips, ideas, and practical solutions for every room and every budget. Beautiful photographs are combined with a nuts-and-bolts approach to making sure you know exactly how to achieve the look in your home. Line illustrations, checklists, shortcuts, and detailed floor plans make Decorate the perfect start-to-finish resource.
- Creative Walls – Geraldine James
Once you have your furnishings and colour scheme sorted, it’s time to turn your attention to your walls! Any wall can be the perfect place to display collections and create character, charm, and elegance. James shows you how to display your treasured pieces to celebrate their uniqueness, your creativity, and your home’s innate style. From a memory wall of family photographs, to witty collections of kitsch art, Creative Walls will show you how to bring any space to life.
- Decorating Without Fear: A Step by Step Guide to Creating the Home You Love – Sharon Hanby-Robie
Decorating Without Fear is an entry-level how to book that will help you create your perfect home. It addresses the big questions to determine what type of environment best fits your personality through a trademarked colour test, and provides step-by-step instructions that will allow you to turn your home into a true sanctuary. The book has a writing style that makes the whole process feel effortless, and it will have you understanding the basics in no time.
