America's Painted Ladies: The Ultimate Celebration of Our Victorians

A fantastic book, a must for anyone who is thinking about painting a Victorian house. It was very helpful to me and my husband who had to come up with a color scheme for our three-story Queen Anne built in 1895. If you're in the same boat, then you know that deciding on a color scheme for a detailed Victorian house isn't easy and takes careful thought and consideration. This book will help you. It will give you countless ideas, and just looking at the photos is inspiring. And then, the book will appeal to any fan of Victorian architecture as well. I love looking at the numerous photos of the houses and find myself thumbing through it again and again. Every time I look at this book, I see something intriguing that I hadn't noticed before. Such a book serves to keep me inspired during the remainder of our home's renovation, which is trying at times.

Taller than any of the other books and nearly twice as thick as the thickest, this gorgeous 1992 volume (Ms. Pomada, isn't it time we got a fifth??), once again produced with the help of partner Larsen and photographer Keister, is, like Daughters of Painted Ladies: America's Resplendent Victorians, a survey of Victorian homes from all over the country. From Searsport, ME, where the subtly detailed, white-bodied Mansard Carriage House Inn welcomes its guests, to a pink 1887 Steamboat Gothic in National City, near San Diego, here are dozens of Victorians, large and small, somber and vivid, plus an assortment of interiors, some fully period, others furnished in more contemporary style against the richly detailed background of the time. If you buy it to "get ideas" for your own Painted Lady, you'll find more than you can choose between. If you buy it just to look at, be prepared to spend hours drooling! A treasure trove for lovers of period detail, which is so admirably brought out by the creative combinations of color used in decorating these buildings.

My husband and I bought this book to get ideas about color schemes to paint our Italiante Victorian home. WOW! Are there ideas here! This book is page after page of gorgeous photos of Victorian homes all over the country. I'll be honest and say that I've read little to none of the text, but I have spent literally hours looking at the pictures. It is also one of the most frequently looked at books by guests in our house. People just love to look at the pictures and "ooh" and "ahh" at the beautiful homes.We liked it so much we bought "Daughters of the Painted Ladies" too!

What a thrill it was to find a book that was dedicated to one of the most appealing houses ever built.. the Victorians. I learned so much from reading this text and each time I look through the pictures, I find another feature in these grand houses to focus on. There is so much to learn that I only concentrate on one aspect of the house at a time. I want to get all of the texts before we start to apply the first of SEVEN colors that we have chosen for our 'Painted Lady'!

Each picture is more gorgeous than the next! On a more serious note, there is practical information on architecture and authentic Victorian painting techniques. I learned a lot about how to identify the type of building style, and got my fix for Painted Ladies more than satisfied. This is a comprehensive, informative, beautiful book, and I recommend it highly.