Featured in House Beautiful's upcoming December issue, this beautiful Corona del Mar property highlights gorgeous, elegant spaces in soft shades. With vintage touches and garden-inspired color palettes, designer Barbara Barry created gorgeous vignettes both inside and out. Click through for a sneak peek at this lovely California home!
Even though you may admire colorful spaces, it's sometimes hard to muster up the courage to introduce non-neutrals into your own home. Deciding on a hue that you like enough to splash across a room is already anxiety inducing, but then there's the dilemma of figuring out how much of it to use, what other colors to use with it, and of course, where to put it. If this sounds like a fitting diagnosis, try to embrace color by following these insightful tips!
Designer DD Allen chose a blue palette in a variety of shades for this Long Island home. The custom watery blue of the polished Venetian plaster walls echoes the blue in the floor tiles.
Designer Barry Dixon chose a feminine pink but tempered it with a masculine shade of brown for the living room in this Capitol Hill row house. The result is a sophisticated, gender-neutral palette that feels perfectly balanced.
To discover the five other tips for conquering color, check out the full story at House Beautiful!
In the new issue of House Beautiful, out this week, editor in chief Newell Turner explores a dozen important personalities in his article "12 to Watch in 2012." Featuring designers, artists, and other visionaries, the list encompasses a truly inspiring mix of people. I chose five of my design favorites from Turner's list, and then chatted with Mr. Turner about his choices. Keep reading to learn more about five of the men and women on the list — including powerhouses behind brands such as Design Within Reach and Restoration Hardware. Then, pick up a copy of House Beautiful fo learn more about the other seven.
Photos courtesy Studio D/House Beautiful
If you're a design enthusiast and a New Orleans fanatic like me, you know Bryan Batt as a co-owner (with his partner Tom Cianfichi) of one of NOLA's finest décor boutiques, Hazelnut. I featured the boutique back in February of '08, and now Batt is set to ink his own home décor book. If you're just mad for Mad Men, you know him as Sterling-Cooper's in-the-closet, recently fired art director Salvatore Romano.
This month, House Beautiful is getting to know him, too. The shelter glossy has the lowdown on Batt's bedroom behavior, from his no-TV rule to his underbed storage, and of course, his bedroom décor resources.
I'm always interested to see where people get their design inspiration. So it was fun to hear about the jumping off point for his bedroom design:
The painting is the whole point of the room. It's by a friend of mine. Suzie Allain, who's a local artist and designer here in New Orleans. She showed some things at Hazelnut, my store here, and I fell in love with this series of bamboo stalks. She did this for me custom and then the room evolved around it.
Since I don't watch much TV, updating my hefty idiot box to an ultra slim HD flatscreen is not very high on my list of priorities. But if I did own the latest and greatest in television technology, I would love to use an artist's easel as a stand, like this one featured in House Beautiful. Tech gadgets are always difficult to coordinate with décor, but that's especially true when your design scheme is earthy and traditional. The wood construction of the easel makes for a near seamless integration. And better yet, it allows you to change the height and angle of your TV — something that few standard media centers can do. Would you try this in your home?
Designer of House Beautiful's Kitchen of the Year Robert Stilin says, "I like an island you can work on but that can also be a gathering place for coffee or a casual dinner." I wholeheartedly agree! Growing up, I'd always do my homework at our kitchen island while my mom cooked dinner. It's also a great place to socialize. Do you have one?
Leave it to Target to come up with yet another cool option for Summer dining. Partnering with event planner David Stark, a new collection of Americana-tinged outdoor tableware is ready to amp up your outdoor dining in the Spring and Summer months to come. I’m particularly fond of Stark’s idea for an on-the-fly outdoor dinner party. In House Beautiful he suggests using one of his Bandana Beach Towels ($12, available in June) for a tablecloth, saying, “Summer makes me think of spreading a towel on the ground for an impromptu picnic. So why not put one on the table?”
Find out how to get the complete look of this table at House Beautiful.
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In Healdsburg, CA (i.e. Sonoma County), there's a rare nearly all-white (actually, very pale gray) house with white furniture, recently featured in House Beautiful, that is anti-shabby chic, anti-slick modern. Nostalgic, campy objects are interpreted in a contemporary fashion, and on glossy floors and against pale walls, large lived-in furniture pieces make a statement. The space almost gives you the feeling of floating through the atmosphere, and when you decided to come back down to earth and sit a while, you're greeted with a plush cushion in every room and a glass of wine — after all, it is Sonoma. To take a tour of the rest of the house, read more
I recently came across a quote from designer Jeffrey Bilhuber in House Beautiful that made me want to throw all of my Summer style and endless Summer tips to the wind. 
When asked if he lived by any Summer decorating rituals, he said:
No. I've rented a cottage on Nantucket and can't wait to get there. 'Have peppermill, will travel,' that's my Summer motto. Really, that's all I need. So here's my advice: Rent someone else's house. Just get away from it all.
I love it. I mean . . . Summer should be carefree and full of ease. Maybe we shouldn't be worrying about introducing bright colors and lightweight textiles into our homes, and just escape it all instead. That's easier said than done though, right?
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I hate to be a downer, but I just have to say that there is nothing interesting about this matchy-matchy style of décor to me. I do love toile, florals, and gingham but seeing so much of them all in one space makes me sad. The lithograph prints hanging on the wall look like they could be beautiful, antique treasures, and the armchairs have an elegant, classic shape, but these great qualities are lost in the busyness of the patterns. 
To me, there's nothing creative or inspiring about using one fabric everywhere. Setting one of the gingham chairs in all-white room would have a significantly more positive visual impact. But, that's just me, and to each his own. If a bedroom such as this makes one woman comfortable in her home then I can't argue with that.
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