Color Style: How to Identify the Colors That Are for Your Home

This is one of those books that quizzes you on your likes and dislikes, then fits you into a color category: Neutral, Air, Wind, Water Fire, Earth, Mineral, all of which are further divided into warm or cool palettes. In theory, you will be happiest if you decorate your home with the colors in your category's palette. Personally, I found that I equally preferred three categories, which is frustrating since not all the palettes go well together. Don't expect this book to solve your entire color dilemma, but it certainly will give you a nudge in the right direction! Importantly, it gives you tips on HOW to use color in your home. It goes room by room to demonstrate using the different palettes, and even has a few tips and tricks to easy decorating. Another, very similar book is: Your Colors Your Home: Decorating with Colors That Reflect Your Personality, but overall, I think I prefer this one. Definitely recommended.

You know when you walk in a house and each room, though different, looks like it was meant to be together? This book makes that process during home-commercial decorating easy and exciting. I have used colors that I never thoght would work together and found great synergy or color-flow.

I found lots of pictures I liked in this book, which is my most important criteria for liking any design book. The scheme of breaking color groups down into fire/water/air/etc. made sense and was fun to play around with.I wish there had been more photos and also that some of the ideas in the book had been taken farther. For instance: a quiz helps you pick if you're drawn to warm or cold colors, but doesn't say anything for someone like me, who scored an even 50/50 on it. Little is said, too, about merging different color groupings in the same house. The Water grouping is "peaceful and relaxing" and the Minerals are "intense and dramatic" -- surely I'm not the only person who might like a dramatic living room in the same house as my peaceful bathroom?