Elements of Style: Designing a Home & a Life

Erin Gates

Oct 2014 · Sold by Simon and Schuster

About this ebook

From the rising-star designer and author of the hit blog, Elements of Style, a full-color, fully illustrated book packed with honest advice, inspiration, ideas, and lessons learned about designing a home that reflects your personality and style.

Elements of Style is a uniquely personal and practical decorating guide that shows how designing a home can be an outlet of personal expression and an exercise in self-discovery. Drawing on her ten years of experience in the interior design industry, Erin combines honest design advice and gorgeous professional photographs and illustrations with personal essays about the lessons she has learned while designing her own home and her own life—the first being: none of our homes or lives is perfect. Like a funny best friend, she reveals the disasters she confronted in her own kitchen renovation, her struggles with anorexia, her epic fight with her husband over a Lucite table, and her secrets for starting a successful blog.

Organized by rooms in the house, Elements of Style invites readers into Erin’s own home as well as homes she has designed for clients. Fresh, modern, and colorful, it is brimming glamour and style as well as advice on practical matters from choosing kitchen counter materials to dressing a bed with pillows, picking a sofa, and decorating a nursery without cartoon characters. You’ll also find a charming foreword by Erin’s husband, Andrew, and an extensive Resource and Shopping Guide that provides an indispensable a roadmap for anyone embarking on their first serious home decorating adventure. With Erin’s help, you can finally make your house your home.

Ratings and reviews

An absolut classic for the interior design lovers! I cannot put it down! 💖 Do not expect it to be a text-book, though, full of ideas and tips. It is a book written out of passion, experience and knowledge. It's a book that one can go back to every now and then. I am awaiting inpatiently for the next one of Erin's Gate. Well done! 👏

exceptional, informative and intriguing

Well as par costs not a costly app

About the author

Erin T. Gates is an interior designer, blogger, and author of the New York Times bestseller Elements of Style: Designing a Home and a Life. She has been featured in publications such as O, The Oprah Magazine, Redbook, Better Homes & Gardens, Elle Décor, Canadian House & Home, the Boston Globe, and The Wall Street Journal. She lives outside Boston with her husband and son.