Most Helpful Home Decorating Book in Review: Habitat

Summary: So helpful! The only design book I think you should bother with.

This book was far and away the most practical, helpful book I’ve read on home decorating so far. I can see why home decorating would be a hard topic to give advice on. The authors don’t know what I like or what my home is like! It seems like a challenge to give advice that is both specific enough to be helpful and general enough to help most readers. The other books I’ve read so far have dealt with this by giving very little advice. They each expressed a design philosophy that sounded good. They were each fun to read. And each provided one or two very general sets of guidelines you could try implementing using your best judgement. This book was more informative in every way.

This book included three sections, all of which were incredibly helpful. The first section has chapters on specific elements of a home – color, rugs, lighting, finishings, etc. These sections included a lot of numeric rules to consider following and basic reference material. There are things like how wide your walkways between furniture should be; the relative height of your sofa and end tables; and the pros and cons of different rug materials (plus cleaning tips!). I thought the book was worth buying for this info alone and expect to reference it often.

The second section is on more intangible elements of design – style, mood, comfort, etc. What really surprised me about this section is that the author managed to give advice for achieving these intangible elements that was both specific and general enough. The suggestions were specific enough that I don’t feel like I’m winging it. For example, the author suggests using specific colors to convey certain moods. The suggestions were also general enough that they could work for me, even when my taste didn’t quite match the authors.

Last but not least, there’s a third section with tips for designing every room in your house. This is another section I’m sure to reference, with both some general guidelines and specific lists of elements to include for each room.

This wasn’t quite as fun to read cover to cover as some of the fluffier books. It was, however, the only one I bought. I think it’s probably the only one I need. And it was so, so helpful. I cannot recommend this one highly enough.

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