Glass House: The Art of Decorating with Light

House Beautiful's "Glass House" is truly inspiring. Light refracts upon white walls, bounces back from mirrors, and pours sunshine into rooms. This book will truly inspire you to use windows much more wisely, filling each room with light and air. The book covers all types of room, from entrys to bathrooms, with suggestions for each. One creative use of a french door is in a bathroom--the last place you would think to place a french door. You can find it on p 67, and it's a pretty, white bathroom that looks out onto an ocean view. For rooms which cannot be accessed by regular windows, large skylights lighten rooms in p 118-119. One of the best things about this book is that it doesn't only show pictures of modern homes. There is another book on the market featuring glass houses, but the pictures are only of modern homes. The trends for modern homes is to use lots of windows, but there are still a lot of us who prefer the traditional. And it's wonderful to see how you can alter a traditional home by larger, but still traditional windows. There are also discussions of how to choose windows.

Simply stated, windows can make or mar the interior design of any home or office. Part of the 'House Beautiful' series of interior design manuals and references, "Glass House: The Art Of decorating With Light" by interior design expert C. J. Petersen is a beautifully illustrated, superbly organized, and articulately presented instruction manual that will provide non-specialist general readers with a sound grounding in design basics when it comes to utilizing and maximizing windows to provide the element of light to increase the attractiveness of individual rooms. An invaluable compendium of practical advice, tips, tricks and techniques, "Glass House covers everything from using bay windows to open up small kitchens; to using a cast glass banister insert as an element of sophistication for an otherwise ordinary architectural feature; to pairing door panes with transoms to brighten confined entry halls; to the use of skylights over kitchen work areas for added illumination; to utilizing glass blocks for shower enclosures; to choosing French doors for their architectural design flare; and so much more. Of special note are the illustrated sections covering art glasswork techniques ranging from sandblasting, to fusing, to beveling. A thoroughly 'user friendly' manual of superbly illustrated ideas and examples, "Glass House" is an enthusiastically recommended and practical addition to personal, professional, and community library Interior Design reference collections and supplemental reading lists.