The DIY style finder

Lots of folks wince when the acronym DIY (do it yourself) appears. Especially when home stuff is involved. Rest easy, though: blogger-author Wood (The DIY Home Planner, 2018) here means decorating with really simple, for-dummies-only projects. This is primarily a reference to, first, help readers figure out their personal styles and, second, provide a colorful landscape of ideas. Wood enlists four other bloggers to represent specific looks traditional, farmhouse, transitional, contemporary, coastal in detail while offering a quiz that calculates the according personal style. After that, she shares room-by-room details focusing on one specific design, combining more than one style, showcasing one element five ways, and featuring an extraordinarily simple project like a memory plate or garden pavers. For example, a living room is designed in coastal style, with details like driftwood, stripes, nautical elements, and coral. In that space, mantels are the object of choice, showing the differences in design among the five. This is a good pictorial quick-start for those with little/no experience in home fashioning.--Barbara Jacobs Copyright 2019 Booklist

In this helpful, brightly illustrated manual, Thistlewood Farms blogger Wood (You've Got This) defines home style broadly but lends workable categories to guide the DIY homeowner toward a unified and balanced home presentation. She lists the five major design styles (derived from her sensibilities and those of four fellow lifestyle bloggers) as coastal, contemporary, farmhouse, traditional, and transitional, with a multiple-choice quiz to help readers determine which appeal most to them. For example, readers that indicate their "home slogan" is, "Isn't zebra print a neutral?" likely have a contemporary design sense. If the slogan is, "Pass the sweet tea," that indicates a farmhouse design sense. As Wood makes clear, these categories are broadly defined, but they serve to point the amateur designer in the right direction, both toward clarifying his or her general preferences in dAccor and toward deciding upon specific projects. An entryway in the farmhouse style might include a timeworn bench and vintage storage buckets, while the same space in coastal could showcase an oversize jute basket. For those desiring a more intentional approach to their interior spaces, this book should prove a beneficial guide for bringing taste and economy to individual home design. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.