Home Decorating for Dummies :: Education by Design Store

Editorial Review
Do you long to create picture-perfect rooms but can’t quite seem to achieve them? Do you want better functioning spaces for working, playing, or living? Do you clamor to express your personal style? If you said “yes” to any of these questions, you’ve turned to the right source for real answers from the pros.

Home Decorating For Dummies, 2nd Edition is for all kinds of people in all kinds of decorating situations, including:

First-time buyers or renters. You have a whole new place to decorate. Where do you start?
Second- or third-time home buyers. Whether you’ve gone up or down in size, stayed in the same region or moved to a whole new one, you need to know how to make your old furniture work in a new setting, how to add furnishings, and how to make your style seem fresh.
Newly blended families. He has furniture, she has furniture, they have furniture. Can it all work together harmoniously? Indeed!
And anyone else who loves decorating. Don’t forget: Imagination counts.

Each part of Home Decorating For Dummies, deals with a broad area of decorating, and each chapter contains specific and detailed information. You'll discover tips on

Basic planning – where to begin when you want to start decorating
Creating surface interest – the effects of color, pattern, and texture, and the problems created by too much or too little of them
Creating backgrounds – what you need to know about the special decorating requirements of your walls
Tackling tough rooms – how to effectively decorate rooms that have special functional requirements
Accessorizing with art and other stuff – adding the final flourishes to every space in your place

Customer Reviews

Awful, awful!

2008-03-05
This is trash! These two "writers" don't know anything but copying other designers... and they can't even get that right! Don't buy this book unless you want to be truly uninspired.

Pretty good

2004-09-10
This book isn't bad at all. I find myself picking it up when I'm trying to watch t.v. It has pretty good details about different things...fabrics, lighting, flooring, walls, etc. As another review stated, 'I wish it had more pictures', and I also wish it were longer. I really don't think it could have had any more detail though. It's well worth the money, no doubt. My next book will be "remodeling for dummies"....

It is basic but not really for dummies!

2000-07-20
After checking out many books from the library and pouring over glossy photos of rooms as large as my whole house, I felt more discouraged than inspired. If you can get past the name of this series of books, this particular "Dummy" book has all the same information about interior design as the books that cost three times as much. Get those out of the library and look at the photos for free. There are only a few photos of rooms in this book. It is mostly just the basics of what you need to understand very basic interior design concepts. Is everyone but me living in a house with 12 foot ceilings, rooms that are 400 square feet and windows looking out on the ocean!

Good, basic start

2000-01-13
Like all the "handbook for Dummies" series, this is good, basic, straight forward information for the novice, written in a very friendly, unintimidating style.

Stop Dreaming, Get Doing

1999-12-30
Good,Solid advice on actually decorating your home instead of fatasizing about the unaffordable and unattainable. I found a lot of helpful information to get me through each stage of a project. I really liked the way the authors wrote...very down-to-earth and freindly, unintimidating and real. I only wish there were loads of pretty pictures too!

At Last -- A Book For Mere Mortals!

1999-12-30
Do you long to create picture-perfect rooms but can’t quite seem to achieve them? Do you want better functioning spaces for working, playing, or living? Do you clamor to express your personal style? If you said “yes” to any of these questions, you’ve turned to the right source for real answers from the pros.

Home Decorating For Dummies, 2nd Edition is for all kinds of people in all kinds of decorating situations, including:

First-time buyers or renters. You have a whole new place to decorate. Where do you start?
Second- or third-time home buyers. Whether you’ve gone up or down in size, stayed in the same region or moved to a whole new one, you need to know how to make your old furniture work in a new setting, how to add furnishings, and how to make your style seem fresh.
Newly blended families. He has furniture, she has furniture, they have furniture. Can it all work together harmoniously? Indeed!
And anyone else who loves decorating. Don’t forget: Imagination counts.

Each part of Home Decorating For Dummies, deals with a broad area of decorating, and each chapter contains specific and detailed information. You'll discover tips on

Basic planning – where to begin when you want to start decorating
Creating surface interest – the effects of color, pattern, and texture, and the problems created by too much or too little of them
Creating backgrounds – what you need to know about the special decorating requirements of your walls
Tackling tough rooms – how to effectively decorate rooms that have special functional requirements
Accessorizing with art and other stuff – adding the final flourishes to every space in your place

Home Decorating For Dummies, 2nd Edition contains all the basics – including how to figure out what you can spend; how to spend it; and the latest and greatest in styles, trends, and technology. What do you do with your space next? The possibilities are endless.

Very basic, some interesting points. 1999-12-17
I decided to give this book as a gift, as it is a good introduction and starting point when in a quandary as to where to begin in the process. This was the first book I read on home decorating and it did give me some things to consider that I might not have thought of with the massive project of decorating, coordinating color schemes, lighting, etc. I went on to more in-depth books, which this wasn't one of them.

could be better; didn't answer many of my questions 1999-11-02
I thought that this book could have been better. Some of my questions were unanswered. The book is almost too simple and I felt that it lacked some meat.