House Design Books

Reviews of Home Design Books for Inspiring Home Design Ideas

As you are going through the Design Your Own House tutorial and designing your home, house design books and magazines will be helpful for providing inspirational home design ideas. On this page you'll find reviews of some of the books that we found the most useful while we were designing our home.

A Pattern Language - Towns, Buildings, Construction
Alexander, Christopher. Ishikawa, Sara. Silverstein, Murray.
Oxford University Press.
1977.

This is a book I will never part with. Not just a home design book but also a commentary on who we are as people and what our souls need to feel comfortable in a home, town, public square or nestled into a window seat.

A Pattern Language is a rather esoteric read that came out of Berkley, California in the late 1970s. The book consists of a series of interlinked patterns that describe principles for design concepts as diverse as Mosaic of Subcultures, Intimacy Gradient, Common Areas at the Heart, Windows Overlooking Life and Bed Alcove.

Purchase A Pattern Language from Amazon.

The Not So Big House
Susanka, Sarah. Obolensky, Kira.
Taunton Press.
1997.

This house design book is full of excellent ideas. The basic premise of the book is to put your house design energy (and money) into the quality of the home and finishing details rather than the quantity (square footage).

To be fair, most of the homes featured in this book are not what I would consider small. Many of the homes are probably in the 3000 square foot range. But for someone designing a home of any size, there are many ideas for creating a custom home design that reflects the way you truly live.

Purchase The Not So Big House from Amazon.

Nest Building: A Guide To Finding Your Inner Interior Designer
Kate Bridger
Redfern House Publishing
2011

In this very engaging, often humorous interior design book, Kate Bridger delves into how to "create a space where your spirit can put its feet up."

This is not a book about choosing color swatches or how to create an interior design to impress your friends. It is about examining your past and present and deciding what your own unique style is—and then accepting and embracing that style.

Throughout Nest Building, Bridger has created exercises to help you understand your concept of home, how various colors and design styles make you feel, your basic needs in a home, as well as exercises to help you build confidence that you can be your own interior designer.

In the chapter Home as Sanctuary, Bridger discusses our needs as humans to create a safe place where we can drop our public persona and be just us. She also discusses how the sanctuary isn't always going to be the equivalent of a zen mediation room. "Home as sanctuary isn’t all peace and harmony either. Home provides the safest arena in which to squabble, test out feelings, release anger, work through sadness and whatever else crops up on the complete and unpredictable spectrum of human needs and emotions."

When it comes to design fads, Bridger suggests making sure you are aware of the influence of design trends and that your design decisions are conscious. "At the end of the day, if following fashion is an intrinsic part of your sense of belonging and makes you happy—go for it! If not, celebrate your chosen options without reservation. Most of us will likely opt for a bit of both."

The book also covers designing on a budget and how to make the most of what you currently have. She suggests many ways that paint—a relatively cheap design element—can be used creatively in a home design.

Although the book is mostly about creating a design that feels like home to you, sprinkled almost imperceptibly throughout these discussions and exercises are some basic design rules. Things like how mixing and matching styles in a sparsely decorated room can feel jarring but how dancing through the design genres and styles in a busily decorated room can actually work. How a large brightly colored couch backed by a bare white wall can look lost and alone but how the same couch can live in harmony with a color-drenched wall. But then Bridger clearly wants you to see that rules are made to be broken and that ultimately only you can decide what your home design rules are.

This book is an excellent guide for anytime in your home design journey, even if you currently aren't consciously designing.

Read more or purchase this book at Redfern House Publishing.

Home By Design
Susanka, Sarah.
Taunton Press.
2004.

House as a Mirror of Self - Exploring the Deeper Meaning of Home.
Marcus, Clare Cooper.
Conari Press.
1995.

House Thinking - A Room by Room Look at How We Live.
Gallagher, Winifred.
Harper Perennial.
2006.

Inside the Not So Big House
Susanka, Sarah. Vassallo, Marc.
Taunton Press.
2005.

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