Call us old-fashioned, but sometimes it is nice to set aside your laptop and thumb through a good book when you are searching for a little home inspiration. We love to curl up on the couch and flip through the crisp pages. Sometimes we fall in love with the feeling a beautifully-styled room evokes, other times we get an incredible idea that lends itself perfectly to updating our personal homes. So to pass that visual wonder onto you, we have rounded up our team’s favorite home design coffee table books for your browsing pleasure…
Feels Like Home: Relaxed Interiors for a Meaningful Life by Lauren Liess
A house is a feeling. That is the conceit behind designer Lauren Liess’s third book, which explores the emotional connection between the way we decorate our homes and our daily lives. She advises readers to think beyond just the objects in their homes and explore how design informs an intentional, happy, and authentic life.
Jungalow: Decorate Wild by Justina Blakeney
Justina Blakeney’s new book is her biggest, boldest, and most beautiful volume yet, filled with irresistible style, original patterns, and artwork—lushly photographed by Dabito. In each chapter, Justina shares her distinctive point of view on everything design fans want to know—how to make bold choices with color and pattern, how to take cues from nature, how to authentically glean inspiration from their heritage and travels, how to break rules, and all the other paths to truly begin to decorate wild. Along the way, Justina also shares personal narratives, practical advice, and nuanced insight into how she lives in her own space—how she reconnects with nature, how she plays and stays inspired, how she gives herself permission to feel free and wild, and how readers can do the same.
Poetry of Place: The New Architecture and Interiors of McAlpine by Bobby McAlpine
This volume features the recent projects of McAlpine, one of the country’s most highly respected architecture and interior design firms, renowned for its timeless houses exemplifying the charm and elegance of traditional and vernacular English, American, and European styles blended with a modern sensibility.
Made for Living: Collected Interiors for All Sorts of Styles by Amber Lewis
Designing a room with all the vibes comes down to how you layer your décor. The more you can mix the elements of your room—your pillows, objects, patterns, and lighting—the more finished it’ll feel: not too new, not too old, but just right. Known for her eclectic approach that stems from her California cool, Amber Lewis trains your eye in Made for Living, offering friendly advice on everything from nailing that perfect shade of paint to mismatching patterns with wild abandon to choosing a stone finish for new countertops. These pages will help you design a home that’s made to be lived in.
The New Design Rules: How to Decorate and Renovate, from Start to Finish by Emily Henderson
Whether you’re embarking on a weekend refresh or complete renovation, interior designer Emily Henderson wants you to take risks with your home design without experiencing regret. In this visually driven decorating bible punctuated with photographs from real homes and colorful illustrations, she takes you through her entire process, including every single decision she makes when it comes to picking paint, arranging furniture, hanging window treatments, and deciding on lighting fixtures. You’ll also learn when to hire a contractor versus an architect versus a handyperson, all the materials to consider, proper measurements of the elements in each room, and so much more. By the end of the book, you’ll feel more confident when it comes to visualizing the home of your dreams, and you’ll finally know how to make it happen.
The Well-Loved House: Creating Homes with Color, Comfort, and Drama by Ashley Whittaker
Ashley Whittaker’s work is distinctively classic and sophisticated, but also inviting and warm. Dubbed a neo-traditionalist, she fearlessly marries adventurous colors and patterns in rooms yet still manages to retain a sense of elegance and restraint. In The Well-Loved House, she shares a selection of dwellings, from gracious Connecticut estates to chic Manhattan pieds-à-terre to waterfront beach houses on the Florida coast, most exclusively photographed for this book, including her own house never before seen. Within each house, Whittaker offers guidance on furniture plans, complementing the architecture of a space, playing with color, and mixing pattern.
Live Beautiful by Athena Calderone
Beautiful design isn’t just pleasant to look at; it improves the quality of our lives. In Live Beautiful, the highly anticipated design book by Athena Calderone, the EyeSwoon creator taps into her international network of interior decorators, fashion designers, and tastemakers to reveal how carefully crafted interiors come together. She also opens the doors to two of her own residences.
Elements of Style: Designing a Home & a Life by Erin Gates
Elements of Style is a uniquely personal and practical decorating guide that shows how designing a home can be an outlet of personal expression and an exercise in self-discovery. Drawing on her ten years of experience in the interior design industry, Erin Gates combines honest design advice and gorgeous professional photographs and illustrations with personal essays about the lessons she has learned while designing her own home and her own life—the first being: none of our homes or lives is perfect. Like a funny best friend, she reveals the disasters she confronted in her own kitchen renovation, her epic fight with her husband over a Lucite table, and her secrets for starting a successful blog.
Design the Home You Love: Practical Styling Advice to Make the Most of Your Space by Lee Mayer and Emily Motayed
Interior design can be daunting, and as a result, many of us never even attempt to design our own homes. In Design the Home You Love, Havenly founders Lee Mayer and Emily Motayed break down the ambiguous world of home design. First you learn how to identify your own style (whether you’re a fan of Parisian Modern or California Casual) and then how to incorporate furniture that matches your style and fits your budget. Design the Home You Love takes you step-by-step and room-by-room through each part of the house to help you fulfill your home’s potential.
Do you have a favorite coffee table book? Add a comment below — we would love what to read next!
All book synopses from Amazon.
