Grab Undecorate: The No-Rules Approach To Interior Design Imagined By Christiane Lemieux Viewable As Edition

of the best interior design books I've seen, Every home in it is unique, While not every home in it fits everyone's taste there is a lot to see in my book, I loved the Brooklyn apartment and the fifty acre farm the floors have drooling, The couple with the loft in Chicago full of cars delighted me, And the fellow with the pixie and "Sprout" collections made me smile, I borrowed this book from the library but I loved it so much I think I will purchase it, a twist on the blog to book, . . it is her pinterest boards with long winded, kiss assy explanations of details that may or may not be as over thought out as one is lead to believe, Eye candy for the unconventional decorator, The premise is basically to throw out the rules and surround yourself with things you love, however, I noticed plenty of rules being followed, A relaxed approach to home decorating, Beautiful homes, mostly dream homes for most of us, Even though the decor is relaxed, it's still expensive,
My only critique is that like overtouseled hair on boybands, some of the interiors seemed a little too overthought, Kind of like they were trying to hard to look as if they hadn't tried so hard,
But beautiful imagery abounds, as with most decorating books, and I dare you to read it without being inspired, Jettison the old rulebooks about home décor and “undecorate” your space, As the founder and creative director of DwellStudiowhich is famous for its brightly colored, graphic textile designs for home furnishingsdesigner Christiane Lemieux challenges tradition in a quintessentially American way, championing a fresh, unconventional approach to creating a beautiful and comfortable home.
Lemieux emboldens readers to push aside stuffy, professionallydesigned décor, showing them instead how to infuse their own personality into their home,
 
Undecorate profiles twenty homes from all over the country, revealing their owners love of imperfection and penchant for surprise and unusual juxtapositions while inspiring readers to follow their own whimsy and practicalities in their personal spaces.
An anglophile creates an English manor in Hollywood, mixing British fleamarket finds with midcentury furniture, A car fanatic turns a vintage Airstream trailer into a master bedroom and situates it in the middle of a vast industrial loft in downtown Chicago, A couple transforms a log house in Nashville, Tennessee, by blending their modern and eclectic styles with the homes rustic charm, Though the designs differ widely, the spaces all express an openminded attitude, Some homes embrace their contexts, while others transcend them, All are shaped by instinct and imagination and share innovative ideas that readers can use to organically and elegantly create their home to match their lifestyle and tastes,
 
Lemieux gets to the essence of the homeowners distinctive styles, pinpointing the transformative ideas, thoughtful details, and useful solutions that make each home memorable, With more thanfullcolor photographs, Undecorate will both inspire and guide homeowners to a new outlook on home design,  
  Fantastic photos and the homes/apts, . . yeah thats what I want, That is where I want to live : Lovely book, Would have it on my coffee table, if there wasn't so much other crap on there already, "Undecorate" seems like an odd title choice for this book, I was expecting something a little more minimalistic and lot less crowded, It wasn't so much a 'display your personality' as a 'display items that suggest a personality you want to show the world, ' And why did so many pictures feature oversized, framed art sitting on the floor, leaving against walls Even the closets had cluttered shelves and odd, old things, Pretty pictures of people's houses and their personal style, With very little text, it's mostly just a voyeuristic ramble through other people's houses, One very cute photo of a gay couple who's house I liked best made me want to be friends with them, I can't say I'll remember much of this one in a week or two however, Everything is so over the top in this book that there really wasn't a single useful take away for me, I ended up feeling a little disappointed with this interior design book, I thought it was going to be more of a 'how to use what you got', instead of 'here look at all these peoples houses who have more money and time than you'.
shrugs Summary: When people both want more attention and want to spend money they do odd stuff to their homes, To each their own. Some homes are harmonious and heartfelt, But overall, the text, attempting to frame it as genius, is borderline whack and empty in half the book,

“Clearly the lesson is to collect what you love disparate elements can complement each other in an unexpectedly chic way, Perhaps the decor works because Heidi and Art have chosen to live with things theyre truly drawn to while maintaining healthy distance from those material possessions, ”

Okie dokie. The thing I really, really like about this book: The way it gives permission to go totally toward your own style, whatever that may be,

The thing I really didn't like about this book: I didn't connect with any of the styles presented, Not one. But maybe that teaches me A LOT about by own style,

I realized as I looked at the pictures that I often found them cluttered, I like clean and open, I like comfort and warmth, I like inviting and interesting, I do not like clutter and distraction lots of distraction in this book, according to my taste, I do not like loud colors and clashing patterns, I guess I wish there had been some examples that weren't as "excessive" as those pictured, Something with the breath of simplicity while at the same time being individual, That's what I'm looking for,

This is an eclectic book in many ways, which is both its great strength and its great weakness, By the end, I didn't feel like I had an idea of what "undecorate" meant in practice, In theory, yes. But practice, no. So, the idea of the book is inspiring, but none of the pictures were, . . for me anyway. Here's my Buzzfeedstyle review, Home Decorations That Prove You Have Too Much Money

Giant, framed art that's on the floor, leaning against the wall, This is a thing, I guess, Want to be a decorating rebel Just lean that shit against the wall, C'mon, don't be a dick, That's terrible. That's basically the easiest way to say "I do not vacuum/mop/sweep my own house, "

Outdoor, concrete garden statues, note the plural, inside, on the floor, If you don't want that room, you can just board it up, you know, Tell people it's haunted. Now THAT'S fun.

Stacks of books all over the floor, sometimes with art perched on top, sometimes a vase,
This is one of those rich man/poor man things, Your artfully arranged, onthefloor book stacks do nothing for me, sir, I would go so far as to say I hate them,

Lamps that rich people own, Seriously, these table lamps look like infectious disease cells as viewed under a microscope, How is it that rich people have the worst lamps They could get any, cool lamp they wanted, and the crap they get, my god, it's like a ceramic thing someone made, and while they were throwing it on the wheel, they vomited all over it and just kept on a spinnin'.


Crazy fucking chairs, These are very generously called chairs because no one is sitting on that fucking thing, A metal, wire frame chair That's like something they would have in a movie inside of a futuristic prison, Here's a hint: If you're buying a chair from a store, and if that chair is the only one of its kind, I probably hate that chair,

Trilobites. That's a bug, sir. If you want to decorate with bugs, come by my place, see how it works for real,

A giant mirror, leaned up against THE WINDOW, at like adegree angle, Just, why

Giant, weird, fake animal furs on the floor, This is like a universal rich person decoration, A giant, fake cowhide, or a giant, fake polar bear fur or something, They love that shit. I don't know why.

Giant, oldtimey maps, If it's got a sea monster where Hawaii should be, and if it's sold at a pricey map store in a downtown storefront, then it's a musthave for richards,

A tree stump, Yeah, you can try and perch a newspaper on that sucker, We know how it really functions, We know it's a matter of hauling something up a flight of stairs and then just slowly building up the guts to toss it off the balcony, You'll get there. i don't know why all the middling ratings, . . this is such a beautiful, inspiring book a total, i especially loved the peek inside the marina city tower chicago apt, at the end! Too expensive, Too cluttered. I have honestly no idea what was undecorated about these homes, Everyone of them seemed completely "done", Yes, they tended to be done in thrift store finds and too much clutter, but they were still done by a decorator, I found the books premise really annoying since it was so obviously untrue, I was disappointed at the conventionally of this book rather quickly and quit reading and just looked at the pictures, While this approach may be "undecorated" bys' standards, these pictures would be perfectly at home in Elle Decor, Dwell, IKEA, or West Elm, etc, which makes me think this book is titled incorrectly, For a book coming from, this seems just like the mode du jour in my opinion, Most of the content in this book wasn't really my taste, except for the room on the cover, which turns out to be a cottage, It seemed to showcase eccentric or different types of homes and collections,

I had high hopes for this book, but it did not meet my expectations, The idea behind the book is to show off houses that aren't perfectly decorated hotel rooms, but rather ones that are lived in, complete with clutter, messes, and disorganization,

Though I generally liked the concept, I was not too fond of the home profiles, Although I appreciated seeing how rooms were used, clutter didn't look the best in several places, It seemed like the book was about acquiring material things and glorifying hoarders, One of the best interior design books I've read recently, Not every interior will be to everyone's taste my favorite was the couple with the antique farm outside New York, and some may seem ridiculous, but they all encourage you to think outside the decorating box.
Checked this out from my local library and skimmed through it, Seems like a well put together book, but just not my style, I consider myself pretty norules when it comes to interior design so I thought I'd like it more, but I guess my style is more outthere than what's in this book a lot of it seemed pretty bland for my tastes.
This book is a complete waste of time, It does not "help" you scale down you life or decorate on the

min, Instead it's filled with people who have similified their life, But some of them have cluttered spaces filled with not one but two or more collections of crap, Sure it's crap that they love but how is that "undecorating" your life It's in the subgenre of "interiors of creatives' houses" and for that it's OK but the book misrepresents itself as amateur design.
It's true that none of the homes were decorated by hired interior design professionals but a good many of the people featured in the book are design professionals themselves! Lemieux has gathered a collection of beautiful homes for this book, and I found most of them to be accessible and not unrealistically styled although there were a couple of exceptions as is usually the case with interior design books.
I was obviously drawn to the homes of families with children, particularly those where it was evident that they LIVED in their homes that's not always evident in some of the houses you frequently see on design blogs or in shelter mags.
For me, the standout houses were Genifer Goodman Sohr's Nashville log cabin, Kim Ficaro's Brooklyn apartment, Christina Sacalis's New Jersey home, and Harriet Maxwell McDonald's beach cottage, The text is wellwritten, and I took away several good reminders from Lemieux's "undecorated" vision,
Note: It did get to where I was playing "spot the Dwell bedding in each house" as I browsed, Lemieux's line was featured in almost every home in the book and become a little obtrusive toward the end, particularly since several homes featured the same linens on their master beds quite close together, making it much more obvious.
I am not sure what I expected from this book but it wasn't this, . . This interior design book, from the creators of DwellStudio, is about breaking rules like harmony, balance, scale and moderation, The premise of this book is that we, the people, are on the cusp of an "undecorate" movement in contemporary interior design, The advent of the internet democratizes interior style, providing inspiration, a soap box and suitable d, i. y. instruction to turn anyone with a sense of style into their own interior designer, In this environment, breaking the stuffy old conventional rules of interior design is de rigueur, The only rule that seems to remain is that you must love it, Fabrics and patterns don't match or even complement each other, Wallpaper creeps up the ceiling,

Some of the homes in this book are not exactly my taste, but I found myself "ooh"ing and "aah"ing more often than not, Each home is distinctly different from the others in the book because this isn't a lesson in A Style it's an inspiration for Style, What they have in common is a truly personal expression of each quirky, creative, busy person/people/family, The resource list is predictable if you read websites like Apartment Therapy, and the really exciting shopping comes from flea markets, antique stores amp thrift shops, We all already knew that, but I admire the way these homes pull that together and make it look so effortless, I read this book a few times over, It was so comforting because it basically teaches that decorating ones home is not about rules but rather about us, What gives us comfort, inspires us, It sharesdifferent homes and the way the designers decorated the spaces not to look pristine and perfect, but rather to display the home owners passions and likes, This is one of my favorite design books, I think most interior design readers are truly voyeurs at heart, I glean bits and tiny ideas about staging a home but in all honesty I barely have a functional structure to my living space let alone a sense of style.
Lemieux must knows this she urges her readers to design around the chaos of their lives and grasp at the symbolic style of what soothes our artistic spirits, I've tore through many a decorating book with the same mission, Lemieux sorts undercoating by people rather than styles and although there's a bit too much copy for my taste, rampant ubiquitous turn of the century white walls, and obviously I can't afford to decorate a cardboard box she does a tremendous job in presenting diversity of style and geography with a cogent flow.
I am happy thatof this book isn't apartments in Brooklyn, My favorites happen to be from the homes in Louisiana, Don't take my word for it take a look for yourself,
.