Joanna Wissinger - The Interior Design Handbook: The essential planning guide to creating your perfect living space

O THER BOOKS BY J OANNA W ISSINGER

Lost and Found:
Decorating with Unexpected Objects

Victorian Details

The Best Kit Homes

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This book is designed in the form of a workbook to help you, the reader, decorate or redecorate your home. It demystifies the often-confusing process of interior design and helps you figure out how to meet your needs and wants while making your home a beautiful, comfortable, and practical place to live.

The Interior Design Handbook is divided into three parts, each with a specific function. The first part, The Big Picture, covers the fundamentals of planning the decoration or redecoration of anything from a single room to an entire house or apartment, choosing a color scheme, and choosing a style. The information and ideas gained from reading the three chapters in this sectionDeveloping an Overall Plan, Creating a New Color Scheme, and Choosing a Stylewill stand you in good stead whether your home-decorating project is large or small. Here are the basics, including how to take a personal inventory, interview yourself and your family to determine your exact likes and dislikes, plan a budget, schedule a project, and make a room plan; develop the perfect new color scheme for each room or revamp an old one; and select the decorating style, whether casual or formal, best suited to your personality and way of life. Each chapter contains checklists and exercises to help you to determine and accomplish your planning and decorating goals.

Part Two, Your Home, Room by Room, allows you to take stock of every room in your home, from the living room to the laundry room. Building on the basic concepts and goals established in Part One, each chapter focuses on the decorating problems of an individual room. They contain checklists of key points, topic-by-topic discussions of design elementsincluding lighting, seating, and storageand exercises specifically intended to help you work out a room scheme adapted to your personalized needs. Throughout, line drawings clarify the text and illuminate specific points.

The third and final part of The Interior Design Handbook, Specifics, deals in detail with several design topics. Its chapters describe how and where to buy furniture of all types, styles, and materials, from traditional to contemporary; identify and evaluate various window treatments, from simple blinds to lavish draperies, including handling problem windows; explain the particulars of domestic light fixtures; explore the many options for wall and floor coverings, from paint and paper to carpet and parquet; and illustrate how to select and arrange decorative objects to the best effect, including how to frame and hang pictures and photos. Appendixes give information on hiring and working with a professional designer or decorator, as well as sample budgets and costs.

Dont be shy about really using this handbook. If you do, youll find it to be an invaluable reference and record of your new home design. The exercises and checklists interspersed throughout the text were developed with exactly this purpose in mind. So make them work for youfill out the charts and answer the questionnaires, complete the exercises and ponder the checklists carefully. Make notes in the margins and tuck in inspirational photos, paint chips, and wallpaper samples. Make it work for you, and it will help you create the living spaces that are perfect for you and your family.

Successful home decorating involves practicality and comfort as well as good looks and style. Of course you want your home to reflect your individual taste, but also you must discover exactly what you need, what you would like to improve, how you would decorate if money were not a consideration, and how much you can actually afford to do. Starting with the ideal, you can then work back to a realistic budget, sort out your priorities, and decide which steps to take. The problem is not to do too much or too little but to do the right things, the things that really make a difference.

Begin by interviewing yourself, your spouse or partner, and your kids about practical, aesthetic, and budgetary matters in order to get a firm grasp of what you have to work with. Ask yourself certain obvious questions: What sort of life do you lead? Do you entertain much? Do you prefer large parties or intimate gatherings, or do you have family over just for holiday dinners? What do you do in each room? Then answer the questions in the following exercises and discuss them with your family.

1. How long do you plan to stay in your present home? This answer will help you decide the best areas in which to invest your decorating budget. See for more on this topic.

2. Do you have children, or are you planning to start a family? How many? What are their ages? Will your children be leaving home soon?

3. Do other family members live with you? Is this a possibility in the future? For example, will you need to add hand rails, grab bars, and special door hardware to accommodate elderly relatives who will come to live with you or stay on long visits?

4. How much space (number of rooms) do you anticipate needing (for example, three family bedrooms, guest room, home office, kitchen, family room/TV room, formal dining room, living room)? Can you use existing space, including a remodeled attic or basement, or will you need to add on?

5. Do you have pets? Which rooms do they go into? Are they allowed on the furniture? Youll need to consider the needs and habits of your pets when choosing upholstery, floor coverings, and finishes for your home.

6. Where does your family like to eatkitchen, family room, or dining room? How many meals do you cook each week? This will help you in the practical planning of cooking and eating areas.

7. To discover and avert any conflicts and plan for necessary double-duty areas, make a list of possible multiple uses for rooms. For example, kitchen: cooking, eating, paying bills, doing homework or hobbies, watching TV, visiting.

8. How often do you entertain, and in what style? For example, do you have large cocktail parties, intimate dinners, formal dinner parties, informal buffets? Which room do you use most? Are you pleased with it or do you want to change it? How?

9. Is there enough sleeping and private space for everyone in the family? What needs to be added?

10. Make a list of your familys regular leisure activities performed at home, such as reading, watching TV, exercising, sewing, woodworking, and piano playing.