The Perfectly Imperfect Home: How to Decorate and Live Well [Hardcover]

The Perfectly Imperfect Home: How to Decorate and Live Well by Deborah Needleman is a terrific resource for home decorators. Needleman writes that the point of decorating is to "create the background for the best life you can live." As a designer myself, I fully agree with this sentiment.

This book is the opposite of what a staged home would be like...(staging is when one creates a home to appeal to all and depersonalizes it.)

According to Needleman, one does not decorate simply to have a home look good...one decorates to feel comfortable, to fit ones lifestyle--functionality, and to feel good in. "Decorating improves ones life!" She claims.

The reader is asked to decide what you want your home to do--what functions should it serve? Next, how does your home make you feel? With this information, you are guided in furniture and styling to make your home work best for you.

The goal is to make your home personal and comfortable and highly functional. she writes: "Luxury is simply what makes you happy."

The remainder of the book is divided into sections with many tips on how to make a functional, personal and comfortable home. Within each of the following chapters, these are discussed:

* Lighting
* The entry way
* Areas for conversation
* "A bit of quirk"--personalizing your space to reflect you
* "Spots for books, drinks, and feet"
* "Cozifications"
* Bedroom
* Bathroom
* "Glamifications"--wallpaper, objects
* "Dinners with friends"--making entertaining special with pretty objects and functional with a well stocked pantry
* Personal stuff
* Smells--adding flowers, scented things
* History--adding antiques, crafts

Altogether, I highly recommend this book. Another book I recommend to my clients and friends is HARMONIOUS ENVIRONMENT: BEAUTIFY, DETOXIFY & ENERGIZE YOUR LIFE, YOUR HOME & YOUR PLANET for more great tips on how to decorate your home for living well.

This book is as refreshing and lilting as a Cole Porter song. The tone of it is a great mix of what the author loves best in design, and writes about: it's light, welcoming, chatty, quirky, comfortable, insouciant, cozy, glamorous, festive, personal and has a sense of history.

For design aficionados, it may read like a good novel. The winsome watercolors by Virginia Johnson add to the quirky charm of this book. They are frame-worthy and would be lovely on the walls of a reading corner, guest room or small bathroom. The watercolors of rooms are appealing the way a painting of a loved one is appealing in place of a photograph. You may enjoy guessing which rooms by designers the illustrations are capturing.

The star here is the text--the pointed point of view of the author Deborah Needleman who was founder of one of the most original design magazines DOMINO and is now Editor in Chief of WSJ MAGAZINE. If all design is opinion, she's got one; it has been informed by the pantheon of the first generation of great professional designers. They are quoted liberally in this book. We know them by their last names: Wharton, Fowler, Baldwin, Hicks, Hadley, Parish, Hampton and de Wolfe. English design is a strong bloodline in this ancestry which influences her philosophy. It combines with a bit of French elegance, and a touch of American democracy in decorating such as don't get hung up on the provenance of a piece as Hadley would say, and combine the handsome with the homely per Bilhuber. Needleman also has favorites in designers working today--some of whom may be on your list. It's an eclectic mix. It may prompt you to create your own list of designers whose works tantalize you.

If design is an expression of personality, this book is an expression of the author's. It synthesizes some of the best of the past, adapting and combining it with contemporary living today. It may inspire you, as it did me, to think about what constitutes your own ideal of a "perfectly imperfect home". What are the 10 adjectives that describe your ideal style? If one word is glamorous, what embodies glamour for you? A folding screen that 1940's stars are always changing behind in 1940's movies? It may provoke you to write down on folders your 10 or so favorite adjectives for style you love, and then start collecting photos of rooms, or elements of rooms, that include the ingredients which epitomize these adjectives for you. You may want to collect quotes by favorite designers on design elements you love, and consider combining them to produce your own book on MY PERFECTLY IMPERFECT HOME. (ELLE DECOR last week sent out an email on BLURB which, for as little as $10.95, will publish a personal bookstore-quality book that you design for your own coffee table or ottoman.)

Reading this book is an aesthetic delight and best experienced curled up in a favorite spot, with a throw, tasty beverage on requisite side table, and a fire or scented candles lit for an uninterrupted hour of sheer immersion in design. Here's a sampling of some favorite design insights from this book. You will have fun finding your own:

* Upholstered chairs are the backbone of a room. (Billy Baldwin)
* Every room should have a personality chair (Sister Parish)
* No more than three brown pieces of wood in a room (Sister Parish)
* When mixing patterns, connect through color and contrast through scale (Needleman)
* English furniture, all foursquare and sensible, was relieved by the delicacy of a French piece (John Fowler)
* I personally try to avoid all ceiling lights because I think that overhead light is a tragedy (Albert Hadley
* Make your home as comfortable and attractive as possible and then get on with living (Albert Hadley)

and one that may make you laugh:

* Every room needs a bit of ugly--"often an ugly color is introduced such as a faded black or drab, to give counterpoint to colors that are sweet and clean." (John Fowler).

Beautiful with a bit of ugly, stylish and sensible, your own vision of a perfectly imperfect home should be enhanced by this book. If you like the elements of style on the cover, you should enjoy the content inside.

I love Deborah Needleman and pre-ordered this book. But it was actually pretty disappointing.

The text isn't too bad since there are a few useful hints here and there, but the illustrations dragged down the entire book. The illustrations in this book aren't even quite like illustrations you find in early Mark Hampton and Charlotte Moss books. These are very loose, impressionistic watercolors of imaginary rooms (though some were copied from real rooms) and vignettes that really don't convey anything and are probably only meant to eat up white space. I wish there were actual photos were you could see textiles, textures, etc. -- all the things that tie into the text and make a decorating book worthwhile.

Also, the illustrations -- page after page after page -- really became very cloying.

I don't think I would've bought this book had I known how incredibly mediocre it would be.

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