Home by Design: Transforming Your House Into Home

This book is fun to own. Lots of good ideas that can be realistically applied. The pictures are beautiful and the writing truly energizes and inspires one to look with new eyes at the way space is used not only in ones own home, but also in public buildings and spaces which one occupies as daily life is lived. I refer to this book often, and would recommend it to anyone interested in beautifying and simplifying their environment.

A groundbreaking book that empowers homeowners to transform a house into a home Sarah Susanka has revolutionized the way we look at our homes. She is an author, an architect, and has been called a `cultural visionary.' She was chosen as a Newsweek top newsmaker in 2000 and a US News & World Report innovator in American culture in 1998. This oversized and gorgeous book is organized into three sections: space, light, and order. The author explains one design principle at a time, showing how and why it works, and how you can incorporate it into your home. The author's goal is to guide you into making your home more comfortable and, at the some time, filled with character and beauty. No matter what the style or size of your home, you can apply each of the 27 design concepts. This book, with its beautiful photographs, will teach you how to be a master of illusion. Sarah Susanka's mission is to create homes with thoughtful design, because, as she believes, your home affects the quality of your life. Would we not all like to have a home infused with delight and inspiration!

I look at home design's books constantly but have never felt compelled to actually buy one until reading Home By Design. The layout of various design options in this book is great for those who own homes and even for those who wish to own homes in the future. There were numerous suggestions on how to utilize any living space. The explanations weren't difficult to understand or patronizing to those of us that aren't interior decorators or architechts. The photographs are beautiful. The rooms in the photographs are spacious but not in a far fetched way that some home design books feature. By that, I mean that you could actually picture some of these rooms in your own home. I think it's important in home design books to make the reader feel comfortable. You don't want the book to have a fairy tale vision because it'll end up in a pile of books at some garage sale. I would definitely recommend purchasing this book. I will be keeping it as a reference manual in my personal library.

Sarah Susanka describes "Home by Design" as "the book I've always wanted to write." As an experienced architect, she works with clients who recognize what they like, but often lack the ability to describe it. She has developed not only a vocabulary to describe some of the design concepts she uses in her houses, but, through this new book, has illustrated these concepts with technically simple language and well selected photos. She organizes the book into 27 concepts under the broad headings of "Space, Light, and Order." A chapter is devoted to each concept with photographs and layouts of a house carefully selected to illustrate the concept. Other illustrations are provided as needed, mostly selected from the other example houses.The quality of publication is up to the standard of her first two books - beautiful photos, well formatted, pleasing to the eye and written in language accessible to a lay audience. She used the practice of her second book, illustrating the principles discussed with the works of other architects who share some of her design ideas. Except for three small photos, only one of the example houses is her own design (Introduction, pp. 10-17).Does this really work? I can speak from a 6-year dialogue with the author that resulted in a house we love. My wife admired the author's work before I ever thought about building a house. We bought a "difficult" lot in an old neighborhood - long, narrow, with a big tree right in the middle of it. We needed an architect. We looked around and liked her work the best of the architects we considered. She accepted the challenge.She had us make a scrapbook of house images we liked and drawings of layouts and other ideas that came to us. We talked a lot. She got an idea of our tastes in materials, forms and colors. She developed drafts of several houses she thought incorporated the ideas we liked. We selected a patchwork from among these possibilities. That provided the cartoon within which she applied her concepts of "Space, Light and Order." The specifications of the house plans that evolved were very detailed - 19 pages of blueprints. Materials and construction methods were tightly specified. Despite that, several key pieces were designed on-site: the entry door, the fireplace surround, the stairwell, some of the trim layouts (both interior and exterior), several additional bookcases.As I read the book, I can mentally illustrate each concept with at least one, often many, uses of the concept within our house design.Does this work for others? It certainly should for readers who build a new house. Its not just that smaller is better - organization of space, use of natural light, alignment are essential to making a house look and feel right. Creative use of these principals is not necessarily expensive but it does not happen by accident. When a visitor admires the way something looks in our house, I tell them it is not an accident. It may look simple and easy, but it takes