Book Review: The Perfectly Imperfect Home

The Perfectly Imperfect Home, Deborah Needleman

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

I really loved this book! I think this is the perfect "coffee table book," filled with short little sections of fascinating information with a lively cover and pictures inside to match. I would have, however, preferred photographs to the drawings, just because sometimes it was hard for me to see what they were trying to express and photos would have done that better for me. That being said, the pictures matched the feeling of the book, which in some ways did more to show what the book was about than photos could have conveyed. The point is, anyone who is looking to style-up their home in anyway should read this book! Sure, some things in it were terribly impractical with small children, but it had loads of great ideas that could be sifted through and carefully applied no matter the situation you found your home in. I would really love to have this book as a constant go-to manual in my home!

Some of my favorite tips or quotes:
"Create cohesion with your bowls, bins, and boxes by having them share common colors or materials."
"Quite simply, the more designated places you have for specific items, the less your entry will end up resembling a junkyard or a branch of the post office."
"Save the super bold for the smaller pieces, like armchairs, pillows, and throws."
"Say no to symmetry. You don't want too much of a good thing: OD'ing on symmetry makes a room dull and stiff." (Something I may tend to do.)
"Irreverent Accents: These are small, whimsical touches that show you don't take the objects in your home too seriously: snapshots stuck into the edge of a beautiful antique mirror..."
"Jollifiers are sentimental things that spread joy every time you cast your eye upon them. They are among the easiest decorating tools as the require no skill, no complicated understanding of color, texture, or composition."
"Mollifiers...[are] the stuff that you allow into your home because as awful as it may be, it makes someone else happy...A really chic person can mollify because she puts love before style -- and she can look upon the offending items as amusing, or at least part of the package."
"When mixing patterns, the rule is to connect through color and contrast through scale."
"This might sound counter intuitive, but to create a beautiful home, you need a bit of ugly."
"Use similar frames to unify a diverse grouping of pictures."
"You can make little 'nothings' -- postcards, notes from friends... -- look terrific by giving them a special place or treatment. These mementos can also be mixed to great effect with good pieces of art."

Okay, that's quite enough. I just don't want to forget the really important ones before I have the cash to buy the book for myself.