Harmonious Interiors: A Design Guide for Creating Harmonious Rooms

Rating:
Summary: Delightful, practical, inspiration, highly recommended.
Review: Harmonious Interiors is a superbly presented design guide for creating harmonious rooms throughout the home. Ann McArdle shows how to utilize furniture, fabrics and collections to reflect a comfortable, liveable, relaxed style. Of special value for interior design are her tips and suggestions for counteracting the stress of modern life, balance work and home, and live in harmony with nature. Harmonious Interiors shows how to bring an added energy and ease to daily life by applying feng shui principles to every room of the house; create calm surroundings through the application of colors and textured furnishings; incorporate mementos and collectibles to express personality and style; and invite nature inside through using understated window treatments, potter herb gardens, and lush floral patterns. Harmonious Interiors is a delightful, practical, and inspirational contribution to personal, professional, and community library interior design reference collections.

Rating:
Summary: Delightful, practical, inspiration, highly recommended.
Review: Harmonious Interiors is a superbly presented design guide for creating harmonious rooms throughout the home. Ann McArdle shows how to utilize furniture, fabrics and collections to reflect a comfortable, liveable, relaxed style. Of special value for interior design are her tips and suggestions for counteracting the stress of modern life, balance work and home, and live in harmony with nature. Harmonious Interiors shows how to bring an added energy and ease to daily life by applying feng shui principles to every room of the house; create calm surroundings through the application of colors and textured furnishings; incorporate mementos and collectibles to express personality and style; and invite nature inside through using understated window treatments, potter herb gardens, and lush floral patterns. Harmonious Interiors is a delightful, practical, and inspirational contribution to personal, professional, and community library interior design reference collections.

Rating:
Summary: Visually it ranks a 4
Review: Pluses: many large, full-page photos, features appealing & colorful rooms
Minuses: grey text almost impossible to read on pastel pages, some picture captions in such small print that you need a magnifying glass, binding isn't very strong.
Enjoyable book to browse for decorating ideas. I'm afraid I didn't gain much from the text on creating a harmonious interior. The final chapter covers feng shui principles for balancing your life.

Rating:
Summary: Nice photo's but not so very helpful.
Review: The book is a visual feast, filled with some delightfully photographed rooms and will certainly give you some design inspiration.

What it will not do is give you an easy to follow abc to designing Harmonious Interiors.

Each chapter contains only one page of information for 15-30 pages of photo's.

Each photo has a caption telling us why that room has an appeal and you get an assortment of suggestions.

There are plenty of conflicting tips to muddle over if you must, but the best thing to do is treat this book like a magazine - lust and sigh, but don't expect any practical information.

A good coffee table addition but don't expect too much.