Domino: The Book of Decorating: A Room-by-Room Guide to Creating a Home That Makes You Happy Author: Visit Amazon's Deborah Needleman Page | Language: English | ISBN:
1416575464 | Format: PDF
Domino: The Book of Decorating: A Room-by-Room Guide to Creating a Home That Makes You Happy Description
From School Library Journal
The editors of
Domino magazine here show how amateurs can achieve a young, sophisticated look in their homes. A brief review of important preliminary considerations—budget, defining one's own style, the room's function—is followed by advice for decorating every room of the house, including children's rooms and offices. Different styles are shown for each in plenty of color photographs, with suggested furnishings and advice on how to mix styles. Each chapter concludes with a look at how a Domino staff member has decorated a similar room with a description of her approach to design. Recommended for large public libraries.
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Review
"The new decor bible for how we live today." (Albert Hadley)
- Hardcover: 272 pages
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster; 1st edition (October 14, 2008)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1416575464
- ISBN-13: 978-1416575467
- Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 8 x 1.2 inches
- Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
I am a major Domino fan. I have been reading it for two years, living vicariously through its profiles of well-heeled decorators and clients, and the resulting photo shoots. I never used to read decorating magazines because I found them a little stuffy or hilarious, but Domino strikes the right balance between whimsy and realistic. So the book - 4 stars. Why not 5 stars for a 10 star magazine?
The book is, well, a rehash of Domino photos for the past few years. The book is a roundup of decorating elements that have appeared in the magazine - patterns, objects, furniture, objets d'art - and they are presented in a format similar to the Lucky Magazine book on fashion. (Both magazines are published by same company.) The book is high on pictures but low on practical advice. You see pictures, a summary of key elements (as in shapes of furniture, a few keywords about the style). There is some information on how to go about the process of DIY decorating or the professional route, but I really missed the details on where to buy what you saw in a picture, or the personal commentary from people who participated in the decorating that makes the actual magazine so great. I think a major element of Domino's success was to hear how living in a room felt like, and these rooms were beloved because they were very habitable, not at all untouchable or filled with dangerous-looking items (Kelly Wearstler, I'm looking at you). But here you just get the end result, without the process, which is what decorating and creativity are all about.
I would recommend this to people who have NOT ever read Domino, or who don't have the patience for it and would prefer to just look at pictures for ideas on how to fix a room, or to get a sense of what they do like.
After hearing such rave reviews for this book, I eagerly waited for it's arrival and gobbled it up the moment I held it in my hand. Unfortunately, I was left with much disappointment. There are some good points for newbie decorators like myself - how to find your sense of style, how to go about decorating a room from scratch, etc - but this is within the first 20-something pages of the book and information that you'll likely find displayed on many design blogs. I also liked that in each section, the authors give an overview of different furniture styles, pros and cons, and what they would match well with. But other than that, you can tell that this book was written for a certain crowd and not the average household. Most of the design examples are in lofts with tall ceilings and seemingly endless space and not in a traditional space ie: moderately sized rectangular rooms with doors and windows to consider. There are some small-space examples but the authors seemed to forget an equally important space size - medium! Homes are not either big or small; some are moderate and I really wished that the book had more examples of that size, along with more traditional floor plans. The floor plans would have been extremely helpful if I had a loft, an oddly shaped room, or something that looks to be a 30x20 ft room.
Outside of the sizing issue, I think that the design elements of the book are for 20-something art decorators with small or no children and their friends. Most of the examples seem either really cluttered or completely spartan but of course, most of the photos only show a small part of the room and you have to take the author's word that the other half of the space blends seamlessly with the small section that we see.
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