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The Essentials: The Art of Interior Design: A Guide to Furnishing, Decorating, and Styling Your Home
From the bestselling authors of Travel Home and Sense of Place, a comprehensive masterclass on interior design filled with practical tips, advice from some of the most respected names in the field, and inspirational examples
Interior designer Caitlin Flemming always gets asked how “the rules” of professional design can be applied to any home—how to pick a paint color and get better lighting, how to mix patterns, where to hang art and curtains, how to get the right scale and placement of furniture and rugs . . . the list of common questions goes on.
While there’s no one way to design a space, there is a teachable art to creating a harmonious home. So Flemming and her coauthor Julie Goebel came up with the idea for this book—a design bible that divulges the wisdom vouchsafed only to the pros.
In The Essentials, Flemming and Goebel consolidate everything it takes to create a beautiful and comfortable home, mining all the knowledge they’ve amassed from decades designing and styling homes and antiquing and traveling the world. They also ask their colleagues, some of the most talented designers in the world, to contribute advice as well.
Organized in three parts, the first section of the book discusses the tacit knowledge that seasoned designers have and how to translate it without being a trained professional. The second, and meatiest, section of the book meticulously lays out the technical essentials for thoughtful home design, covering subjects such as lighting, hardware, textiles, window treatments, furniture, and more.
And finally, the third section shows how all the individual elements and details combine to make a room, illustrated through tours of the inspiring homes of nine designers.
It takes hard work and years of practice to develop and train an eye for design. This book shortcuts the process by sharing easily teachable techniques and breaking down the factors behind the many decisions that go into beautiful home design The Essentials is an indispensable reference for every design enthusiast.
Interior designer Caitlin Flemming always gets asked how “the rules” of professional design can be applied to any home—how to pick a paint color and get better lighting, how to mix patterns, where to hang art and curtains, how to get the right scale and placement of furniture and rugs . . . the list of common questions goes on.
While there’s no one way to design a space, there is a teachable art to creating a harmonious home. So Flemming and her coauthor Julie Goebel came up with the idea for this book—a design bible that divulges the wisdom vouchsafed only to the pros.
In The Essentials, Flemming and Goebel consolidate everything it takes to create a beautiful and comfortable home, mining all the knowledge they’ve amassed from decades designing and styling homes and antiquing and traveling the world. They also ask their colleagues, some of the most talented designers in the world, to contribute advice as well.
Organized in three parts, the first section of the book discusses the tacit knowledge that seasoned designers have and how to translate it without being a trained professional. The second, and meatiest, section of the book meticulously lays out the technical essentials for thoughtful home design, covering subjects such as lighting, hardware, textiles, window treatments, furniture, and more.
And finally, the third section shows how all the individual elements and details combine to make a room, illustrated through tours of the inspiring homes of nine designers.
It takes hard work and years of practice to develop and train an eye for design. This book shortcuts the process by sharing easily teachable techniques and breaking down the factors behind the many decisions that go into beautiful home design The Essentials is an indispensable reference for every design enthusiast.
- GenresDesign
307 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 21, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 21, 2026
Beautiful photography and fun to flip through, but doesn’t deliver on its promise to teach basics of design (mostly because each section is an interview with an expert in each area, each of whom has subjective ideas about what makes for the best design). Also if you happen to live in a boring home without the means to change it architecturally, or even worse have a family and things like toys, you are out of luck for ideas. This will make a good coffee table book but most of us won’t take a lot of ideas from it.
January 17, 2026
Fantastic. I still wish it felt a little more practical and travel-y like Travel Home felt. It'll definitely be a keep around on a shelf though for looks and reference!
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews