Home Decorating for Dummies

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.

Whether you have recently moved into your first home or certain rooms in your home need a fresh face, Home Decorating for Dummies has the answers for you. Full of advice on selecting bathroom fixtures, deciding between carpets and wooden floors, accessorizing your family room, and more, this book -- complete with color photos to spark your imagination -- helps you gain the knowledge and confidence needed to design your home according to personal taste.

Library Journal

Designed for the do-it-yourselfer, this new book from the McMillans (House Comfortable: The Art and Science of Comfortable Living, LJ 9/15/96) provides all the basics for home decorating, including styles, lighting, room-by-room design, and accessorizing. The Dummies format works well here; tips and pitfalls are highlighted with icons, although there are too few pictures to illustrate some points. Kitchen design would have benefited from a checklist of design considerations similar to the one provided with bathroom design. Given the popularity of the series, this is a worthwhile purchase for public libraries.

Katharine Kaye McMillan, former senior editor of a New York City-based national magazine, is a writer whose work appears regularly in magazines and newspapers. She is a contributing writer to internationally circulated Florida Design Magazine. She is the co-author of several books on decorating and design, including Sun Country Style, which is the basis for licensed signature collections of furniture and accessories by three leading American manufacturers and importers. A graduate of the University of Texas in Austin, she holds a masters degree in psychology and is a doctoral student in psychology at Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida.

Patricia Hart McMillan is a nationally known interior designer, whose interior design work for private clients, designer showcases, and corporations has appeared in publications worldwide, including the New York Times and USA Today. Known as a trend spotter and for clearly articulated views on design, she is quoted frequently and extensively in both trade and consumer publications. She a ppears on TV and talk radio. A prolific writer, she is coauthor and author of seven books on interior design and decoration, with Sun Country Style signature collections of furniture based on two books. She has taught decorating courses at several colleges and conducted numerous seminars across the U.S. She is decorating editor for Christian Woman Magazine and reports on design trends for The Sun-Sentinel, a Tribune newspaper based in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. She has been editor-in-chief of two publications and was head of a New York City-based public relations firm representing some of themost prestigious names in home furnishing and building products. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English, with a minor in art history (with an emphasis in architecture), from the State University of New York (New Paltz). She was awarded a certificate from The New York School of Interior Design.