14 Essential Books for Home Design Inspiration
Author’s Note: This post was originally published on January 29, 2022. It has been updated to include new releases that have become indispensable to my shelves.
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When it comes to design inspiration, I’m kind of old school. I love all the beautiful spaces I scroll past on Pinterest and Instagram, but there’s something about a book that I find so much more conducive to my creativity. Maybe it’s because a book has a point of view: instead of a pastiche of disconnected images, books give us a lens through which to view our homes. They take us into a world where the rooms and objects are part of a bigger story. The accompanying narrative tells us not just about the finished spaces, but the challenges the designer faced and their aspirations for the life that will be lived there.
At the same time, I’m careful about the books I let into my headspace. (And my coffee tables!) A lot of books on interior design can be a bit… dictatorial. They declare that there’s one right way to create a color scheme or choose a sofa. Worse, they make you feel like if you don’t (or can’t) do it that way, your home will always be uncool or subpar.
For example, one book I recently read declares that you must paint a new home entirely in white before you can paint it any other color (because I definitely have budget and time to paint my house twice), that a bedroom be used only for sleeping (pity us poor fools who live in spaces where we might need to multitask), and that plastics of all kinds should be banned from the home (sorry kids, those Legos gotta go!). When I was younger and took books like this seriously, I’d look around at the beige linoleum kitchen counters and my tiny bedroom / office / craft room and feel hopeless. Why even bother redecorating? My own design projects often felt doomed from the start.
Books for Home Design
My Design a Home You Love students know that I have a strong aversion to rules and formulas when it comes to design advice. First, I cannot be convinced there is one right answer for how to create a home that feels good. There are different approaches for different people, different times in life, and different spaces — and how boring to insist that everyone do things a certain way. Second, most “rules” break the second you get into a real space. Unless you are building a home from the ground up , you’ll never have a perfectly ideal space to work with. (And even then you’ll have to contend with zoning, siting, climate, and budget.) But I firmly believe that’s a good thing! Real spaces lead to ingenious solutions that make a space charming and memorable.
So, I avoid books that frequently use the words always, never, should, and perfect. Instead, I prefer books that offer a range of design ideas that inspire me and help me solve the problems I’m facing in my own space. I tried to winnow this list down to my essentials — the home and decor books that I can’t live without. These are my very favorites.
A Pattern Language
Understanding space
A Pattern Language, by Christopher Alexander et al is one of the ten most important books on my shelf. Even if you have just a passing interest in any aspect of design, this book will make your life better. The book is broken into small sections called “patterns,” each of which details an observation about the way that people relate to space, and how space can shape human life and interactions for the better. The patterns begin at the large scale, with cities and towns, moving down through neighborhoods and streets, and then into houses, yards, rooms, and furnishings.
It’s from A Pattern Language that I learned that people will congregate in the sunniest parts of the home (regardless of what those rooms are designed for), and that rooms with northern light can sometimes feel flat and in need of a lift. It’s also where I learned about the universal love that children have for “secret places” — cupboards or attics where they can hide and play.
The book is a doorstop, but you don’t need to read it cover-to-cover to benefit. Skim the contents to find patterns that catch your eye. These will help you better understand your home (and neighborhood, city, or town) and the way you live in it.
Remodelista: An Organized Home
Organization
Remodelista’s An Organized Home is the simplest, most helpful organizing book I’ve read, and I’ve read a lot of them. While Marie Kondo’s The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up is an important foundation for decluttering, this book helps you figure out what to do with the stuff you still have in your home.
We’ve put so many of the strategies in this book into use, like using trays to corral disparate items (which taps into the gestalt principle of grouping) or using organizational tools in ways they weren’t intended (paper sorters for pot lids, for example). And in the back is a list of 75 beautiful home organizing products that can help keep you from aimlessly wandering the Container Store.
My Bedroom is an Office & Other Interior Design Dilemmas
Problem-solving
I love this little book because it offers a myriad of practical ways to deal with common home frustrations, like how to keep the TV from dominating a space or how to make a windowless room feel brighter. My Bedroom is an Office never makes me feel bad about the space I have, but always makes me feel confident I can make it better.
How They Decorated
Design history
From Pauline de Rothschild to Babe Paley to Georgia O’Keeffe, P. Gaye Tapp’s How They Decorated looks at famous women of the twentieth century and how they decorated. I love how this book weaves together biographical details with style choices, and offers a peek at design history but with a contemporary enough lens that the designs still feel relatable. (Or at least as relatable as the homes of women so glamorous can be.)
Absolutely Beautiful Things
Layering
Anna Spiro is one of my favorite designers. Her first book Absolutely Beautiful Things is a masterclass in creating a vibrant, layered home that really feels lived in. Spiro is joyfully unafraid of color and has a casual way of designing that really works for the kind of life that has kids and pets and you know, life happening all the time.
Spiro also has a new book called A Life in Pattern that I need to check out. Her style has evolved a lot since this first book, and I’m excited to see what the new book contains.
Living With Pattern
Pattern
Both of Rebecca Atwood’s books (Living with Color is her newest release) have a prominent place on my shelves, but if I had to play favorites, Living With Pattern is the one I couldn’t live without. Atwood is a textile designer and a friend of mine, and her style highlights a beautifully understated kind of joy.
This book features real homes and gives tips for finding patterns you love, making patterns work together, and using pattern in unexpected ways in your home. There are also a number of simple DIY projects that allow you to dip a toe into the world of pattern without investing a lot of time or money. I return to this treasured resource again and again.
Every Room Should Sing
Composition
I’m breaking my “no shoulds” rule here, but with good reason. This relatively recent book by designer Beata Heuman has been an instant favorite for me. I think it’s because Heuman truly understands the notion of designing for joy. When she says a room should sing, she really means that it should shine on its own merits, inspired by the life of the person living in it. She mines unconventional sources of inspiration and brings together unlikely styles, objects, and decor ideas to create rooms that feel unique and personal. Heuman is a master of composition. Every time I think I know what to expect, I flip a page and find something different.
Every Room Should Sing walks through ten projects. I find it incredibly useful to hear about Heuman’s creative process and inspirations. And a wealth of irreverent quotes inspires to not take things too seriously and stay true to my own intuition.
Maison: Parisian Chic at Home
Joy over perfection
Yes, this book by style icon Inès de la Fressange and artist Marin Montagut is eye candy for those of us who adore French interiors. But the real reason I love this book is that it’s one of the few home books that shows us interiors that haven’t been overstyled. Having had my home photographed for a magazine, I know how great it is to see the space cleaned up, with thoughtful props added and the dish soap hidden and a bowl of fruit placed just so. But that’s what it looks like about .01% of the time, so it’s more important to me to make my home joyful for everyday life.
The interiors in Maison are beautiful without being obnoxiously tidied. I can see that someone lives there. The well-worn pillows weren’t replaced with fresh ones and the books on the nightstand are the ones actually being read. Maybe this is because French dish soap is prettier than a bottle of Dawn, but it feels closer to reality. It’s like the authors believe that real life itself is beautiful, more beautiful than the sanitized, styled version we see all over Pinterest, and seeing it here helps me believe it too.
Making Living Lovely
Risk-taking
Russell Whitehead and Jordan Cluroe, aka 2LG, are known for their fearless designs and their unabashed use of color. I love Making Living Lovely because it provides inspiration for finding freedom in design: from rules (”rules are bullshit” is a real sentence in this book), from norms (see p. 40 on breaking gender codes in design), and from your own fears.
While 2LG’s style is really different from mine, their fearless approach contains lessons for anyone, and their light-hearted tone is always supportive, never judgmental.
Decorating is Fun! How to Be Your Own Decorator
Having fun in the process
Joyful readers know how much I love Dorothy Draper, America’s first interior decorator. This 1939 classic is her step by step guide for helping women create a joyful home with what they had. Yes, some of the advice in Decorating is Fun! is dated, and yes, Draper can be a bit bossy sometimes. But if you look past those things, this book offers a wealth of ideas for how to make a home feel lively, personal, and creative, and how to have some fun in the process.
Hill House Living
Lifestyle
Paula Sutton was a city-loving fashion executive living in London before decamping to the country with her husband and three kids. Hill House Living shares discoveries of country life and tips for furnishing a house slowly and affordably using vintage finds. Her style is whimsical, her tone relatable, and it’s fun to see how her design and lifestyle intersect and overlap.
One thing I love about this book is Paula’s frank discussion of race in country house style. As a Black creative and author, she is both cognizant of the associations that country style has with a colonialist past and the stereotypes that some people carry around Black design styles. At the same time, her thoughtful work disrupts these stereotypes and points toward the importance of finding style that you love, no matter what others might think.
More than Just a House
Collecting
This book full of creative interiors really speaks to the Collector side of my design personality. Alex Eagle lets you peek inside some truly unconventional homes where the art takes center stage. Whenever I feel like I’m seeing the same design trends repeated over and over again, More than Just a House reminds me to come back to what I really love, and build from there.
Uncommon Kitchens
Rule-breaking
As the name suggests, Sophie Donelson’s book is full of unique, beautiful kitchens. But this is more than a coffee table book. Uncommon Kitchens is a manual for breaking the rules and designing for joy in any room of the house. Sophie challenges us to re-examine everything we’ve absorbed about what a kitchen should look like and focus on creating a space that really feels like the heart of the home.
The Bunk Bed Book
Children’s spaces
Laura Fenton’s collection of bunk beds, lofts, and cozy nooks is my favorite book about kid’s spaces. It’s full of charming, innovative spaces that make the most of every square foot. If “cozy” is on the list of feelings you want in your home, add this book to your cart.
Do you have design books that help inspire you to create more joy at home? Please share them in the comments!
Reminder: Sign ups for the 5 Secrets to Designing a Feelgood Home are now open! Check the schedule for this year’s free live workshop here.
Discussion (10 Comments)
I’m not a designer, but I really loved Soul Space by Xorin Balbes. It made me think about what I really want in my home, and what reflects my taste and passions. I’m a homeless shelter manager, and we are in the very beginning stages of building a new 20-bed shelter in our little town and have been casting around for what would make it feel cozy and welcoming. Any suggestions would be welcome!
Justina Blakeney’s books are gorgeous yet grounded and always inspire me!
A great selection but please check details before posting. It’s Paula Sutton not ‘Pamela’
Oh my goodness, working too quickly over here. Fixed! Apologies for the careless error!
I have been reading “Maison” recently and it’s refreshing. Another book like that is “Life Unstyled,” by Emily Henson. I have been enjoying and getting a lot out of “Vivid: Style in Color,” by Armelle Habbib and Julia Green, a photography book about color in design. “Hill House Living” is on my list to read as well. Thanks for such great suggestions!
Coucou Kameela! I agree, lovely selection presented by Ingrid, I must check them out. And I have been thoroughly enjoying Paula’s book–so so love her insta posts. XO Rona
Thanks Ingrid, love all your suggestions and the freedom that drives your choices, how refreshing!
I really like “It’s Beautiful Here*” by Megan Morton! Lots of variety of styles, and everything looks achievable. The write ups are fun to read too.
A book I’ve found to be a wonderful companion read to Joyful (which I’ve loved and gifted!) is My Creative Space: How to Design Your Home to Stimulate Ideas and Spark Innovation by Donald Rattner. I love how the author, an architect, draws on science (just like in Joyful!) to provide practical tactics for using design to stoke creativity in your home. Perhaps it’s because I think creativity and joy go hand in hand! 😉
Really appreciate this list. I’ve heard of A Pattern Language by Alexander, Ishikawa, and Silverstein et al. so many times – but reading your blurb about it, I finally decided to get it – and it really is superlative. Excellent ideas about how we use space. So thoughtful about what the history of design shows us, and what might be the psychological reasons for these adaptations. I do wonder if there are folks studying this with research to back up the observations. Just an outstanding resource, however! And now I’m so glad I hadn’t yet rebuilt my front steps/porch so I can incorporate these ideas in what I do!!!
Thank you too, Ingrid, for your emphasis on joy and colour – that’s always been part of my approach to life and I’ve struggled with feeling judged for it: when I wear my red polka-dotted dress, I don’t want to be viewed as a kindergarten teacher but as the scholar I am – but I also want to increase our respect for kindergarten teachers and shed my own inner-commentary of self-doubt. So thank you for helping me reclaim that! An ongoing struggle, but it helps to feel seen in your book and in your work.