Acclaimed designer and artist Diane Love shows you how, in this beautifully photographed volume, to discover and define your personal taste, then demonstrates how to build a decor that is functional, aesthetically pleasing, and truly reflective of your personality.
Within the pages of this beautifully photographed book, acclaimed designer and artist Diane Love presents a truly innovative approach to interior design by equipping you with an understanding of your unique taste and the ability to use it to create your personal decorating style. Through easy, fully illustrated, step-by-step exercises and examples, she helps you to discover and define your taste, then demonstrates how you can use this knowledge to create a functional and aesthetic decor that is a true reflection of your personality.
PART I: WHAT IS YOUR TASTE? Seven exercises, comprised of simple activities and questions, and free of self-conscious personal evaluation, help you to better define and articulate your taste. The exercises begin by asking you to select from magazines rooms that you love (your YESs) and those you don't (your NOs), then they help you to find words to express your impressions about a room's decoration, to distinguish the common denominators always present in the rooms you choose, and to pinpoint your likes and dislikes through your reactions to elements of a room's design, from architectural elements to furnishings to the color palette.
PART II: EXERCISE YOUR TASTE Eleven methods taken in sequence explain the step-by-step process of decorating a room and show you how to incorporate what you have learned about your taste in Part I in order to create a decor that is comfortable and aesthetically pleasing to you. Topics covered include: using space efficiently, evaluating architectural elements, renovating economically, making a furniture plan, achieving visual balance, arranging objects and pictures, choosing lighting, and working with mirrors.
QUESTIONNAIRE AND WORKBOOKS A questionnaire specially conceived to assist you in analyzing your decorating style enables you to track your aesthetic attitudes, reactions, and preferences. The two workbooks-one of which is separate from the book and easily portable.
Diane Love began her work as a designer by arranging flowers for her home and jewelry for herself, which soon led her to open her own store, Diane Love, Inc., on New York's Madison Avenue. Originally created for the shop, her decorative objects, silk flowers, home fragrance, and jewelry have been sold through her boutiques at major retail stores. The author of Flowers Are Fabulous for Decorating and a former flower arranger for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, she has lectured extensively on flower arranging and interior design. Her jewelry was included in Jewels of Fantasy, a retrospective of twentieth-century jewelry designers that was on exhibition at museums worldwide. After twenty years, she closed her business to work as a painter and now shows her work through galleries. She is also a professional actor and photographer. A passionate believer that all artistic pursuits work together to enhance a person's creativity, she lives in New York City.
