The Interior Design Handbook: Furnish, Decorate, and Style Your Space

It’s a fun coffee table book! It has lots of good information in there, and it’s a good looking book. The texture of the cover is also very nice.

This book was published in 2019. It has 240 Thick pages. A few of the pages at the beginning are not numbered which is not a problem. There are 9 chapters: What Makes You Feel Good?, Basic Principles and Rules of Thumb, Tools to Help You Bring It All Together, Colors, Lighting, Design Tips, Buying Tips, Key Measurements and Proportions, and Planning Your Interior Project. There are no color photos in this book. There are approx. 81 pages with black and white drawings, such as showing you how to and not to place furniture, and how to and not to hang window curtains. This book is FULL of interior design information. I really enjoyed reading this book. I learned a lot from this book. Highly recommend. Delivered as instructed, packaged well and delivered on time.

I wish I had found this book years ago! I can tell if a room feels and looks good but I've never been able to clearly define why. This book does exactly that. It gives you the concepts you need to make a space beautiful with more than just instinct. The writing is so good! Clear, concise and concrete rather than the poetic prose a lot of design books have. And the best part is, you can use this information right away without buying anything. If you have a limited budget and want a home that feels comfortable and looks beautiful this book should be your first investment.

The book is descriptive and provides excellent design advice. However, for someone who is new to interior design, the picture would be very helpful to visualize the advice. For example, the author talks about still life styling or colors or varying scale but without pictures it is so hard to visualize them.

I am moving in or 60s to a home that will likely be our last. I want to decorate with intention as opposed to using what we have and replacing what we need. I worried that the author being Scandinavian, would mean more minimalist than I want to be. Wrong!! I bought a pile of home decors books and this is the only one to teach me what to do and how to do it. There are no color pictures just drawings. I’m enjoying the beautiful, coffee table worthy books but this is explaining what these other designers have done and why. I really would buy this book before any of the other eight highly rated picture books I have bought.

Excellent educational tool if you want to learn (rather than copy others' ideas).If you just want to copy looks that other people came up with, this is NOT the book for you. There are no glossy photos to "inspire" you (if you want ideas of looks, just go online). What's great about this book is that it actually teaches you how to think like a designer, so that you can come up with the right looks for your own specific space. The problem with so many design books is that you get seduced by all these gorgeous looks in other people's homes, but if you try to replicate it in your own home, it looks awful (either due to differences in sunlight, room spaces, etc.).Yes, the material is dense (and at times boring), but that's a good thing -- it means you're actually learning and becoming a better designer yourself. And then once you figure out the tools of the trade, you'll realize you don't need to pay a professional a ton of money!

I bought this book after returning the top-ranked so-called “interior design” book on Amazon (which turned out to be very repetitive design porn from an influencer - nothing instructional or helpful). If you want glossy pics of what’s trendy (and expensive) or what a particular designer/influencer uses repeatedly, this book from Frida Ramstedt is not a good choice. I had know idea who she is and I really don’t care (though the book mentions she has a popular blog and I suspect she’s well known in Scandinavia). Unlike the aforementioned book, Ms. Ramstedt’s book isn’t about her preferences and favorite projects. It’s not even particularly focused on Scandinavian design (though there is a section where Scandinavian architecture is illustrated with line drawings). It is an actually useful guidebook with general rules and advice for anyone who wants to design their own interior or better understand how an interior designer (versus an influencer) approaches a project. I just finishing skimming the book and I know I will come back to it for guidance on everything from paint colors to furniture buying and placement to creating still lifes with items I already own. Ms. Ramstedt isn’t trying to sell her “brand,” she’s actually providing an instructional handbook (it even includes an index for quickly finding answers to your specific design questions). Very glad I replaced my early purchase with this!

This was a quick and friendly read for anyone planning out their home. We are in the middle of a full house renovation and I wanted to be sure I got the little details right. This is written for the ordinary person, it’s not technical and dry. It’s helpful for creating inviting spaces because it breaks down HOW to achieve the looks we see online and in print. How to arrange things, how to plan a lighting scheme, color planning-it is all here and easily accessible-it’s not lofty and unattainable-it literally breaks down how to create a polished and finished room without hiring a designer. Highly recommend for anyone with a space to live-apartment or mansion, the principles are the same!