Elements of Style: Designing a Home & a Life (A Guide to Home Design)

The New York Times bestselling decorating guide that launched Erin Gates’s beloved Elements series. The Elements of Style is filled with stunning visuals, expert advice, and practical tips to help you transform your home into a true reflection of your personality and style.

Drawing on her fifteen years of experience in the interior design industry, Erin 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 close friend, she reveals the disasters she confronted in her own kitchen renovation, her struggles with anorexia, her epic fight with her husband over a Lucite table, and her secrets for starting a successful blog.

Organized by rooms in the house, Elements of Style invites readers into Erin’s own home as well as homes she has designed for clients. Fresh, modern, and colorful, it is brimming glamour and style as well as advice on practical matters from choosing kitchen counter materials to dressing a bed with pillows, picking a sofa, and decorating a nursery without cartoon characters. You’ll also find a charming foreword by Erin’s husband, Andrew, and an extensive Resource and Shopping Guide that provides an indispensable a roadmap for anyone embarking on their first serious home decorating adventure. With Erin’s help, you can finally make your house your home.

Complete your collection with The Elements of Family Style, a guide to creating beautiful, functional spaces for the whole family, and The Elements of Timeless Style, a masterclass in designing elegant, enduring interiors.

Erin Gates is an interior designer, blogger, and author of the New York Times bestseller Elements of Style and Elements of Family Style. She has been featured in publications including Oprah Daily, Redbook, Better Homes & Gardens, Elle Décor, Canadian House & Home, The Boston Globe, and The Wall Street Journal.  She lives outside Boston with her husband and children.