Total Design : Contemplate, Cleanse, Clarify, and Create Your Personal Spaces

"To truly support us, a home has to stretch beyond its material properties and sustain our complex human needs." This philosophy is at the heart of every environment that acclaimed designer Clodagh creates, and it represents an entirely new and sustaining way to look at interior design.

Total Design is concerned with the experience of living and not simply the look of it. It encourages an ongoing awareness of our surroundings to keep us energized and our shelters alive, not static. Using a process she calls the Four C's, Clodagh reveals how she helps each client envision a project, first by contemplating the space as it is, then by cleansing it of unnecessary items and clarifying the individual's goals, needs, and desires, and, finally, by creating a space that is uniquely his or her own.

In chapters devoted to the senses, nostalgia, small spaces, the influence of nature, melding personal and professional identities, privacy and retreat, and more, Clodagh shows how our relationships to the places and things we've experienced can be used to shape our environments while encouraging continued growth and exploration. Filled with sensual textures and unexpected details, these are vibrant rooms that are at once supremely practical and lushly indulgent. Sections dedicated to materials, lighting, displaying art, and using color illuminate the principles of Total Design. A comprehensive workbook provides a blueprint for putting these principles into practice and setting personal priorities.

At once innovative and timeless, minimal and luxuriant, Total Design is a celebration of homes that are deeply personal and serenely beautiful.

"A home cannot be truly beautiful unless it functions in harmony with who we are. This book is about pleasure: discovering what pleases us and creating an environment that will celebrate those qualities and sustain us."
-- Clodagh

Born in Ireland, CLODAGH worked extensively in the fields of fashion design and architecture in Ireland and Spain before moving to New York in 1983. There she opened Clodagh Design International, a design studio and showroom that has undertaken commercial, residential, retail, office, salon, and corporate image projects throughout the United States, Europe, and the Far East. Through Clodagh Signature, her licensing and product division, she has created textiles, packaging, lighting, home accessories, furnishings, and other products that are available nationwide. She has been named one of the world's leading interior designers by Architectural Digest, and Interior Design magazine inducted her into their Hall of Fame in 1997. Clodagh and her husband, photographer Daniel Aubry, live in New York City.