Yes/No Design: Discovering Your Decorating Style with Taste-Revealing Exercises and Examples

Not only is this book intelligent, but it calls on the reader to find her own creativity. So often we are told what to like and where to buy it. While these things can be helpful, if what you really want is to express yourself in your surroundings, then Yes/No Design will lead you within to uncover and create. Living in a consumer culture, it is easy to get out of touch with our own expressive sides, and I really like how Ms. Love encourages us to take that journey back to our most original selves. If you are willing to complete the exercises and look at them as a whole, what you can find is nothing short of your self. I think Yes/No Design is a text on how to distill out the essence of design as an act of personal creation. Rather than paying Ms. Love to tell us what to like, we are gaining something far more valuable with the purchase of this book -- a guide to our own creativity which we can then use to decorate our homes and every other area of our lives.

Diane Love's "Yes/No Design" is a joy. It's a gift that I gave myself not knowing the profound effect it would have upon me. Having had little or no faith in my aesthetic sense, "Yes/No Design" helped me trust my choices through the simple understanding of my likes and dislikes (for things such as colors, sizes, shapes, space, and patterns). The book is beautiful, thought-provoking, validating and inspiring. I realized I don't have to be an "expert" to create a lovely home. "Yes/No Design" helped me get in touch with who I am, what I enjoy and appreciate, and what makes me comfortable. For me, decorating my home has become a metaphor for changing and improving my life and my attitude. Diane Love has shown me that beauty most definitely comes from within.

I have a shelf full of books on design but Ms. Love's is the first to take me inside myself. Most books are full of advise on color schemes and furniture styles and such but none that I'm familiar with challenge/help the reader turn often intuitive likes and dislikes into a strategy for creating a style of h/her own. On top of that, the book is fun -- and visually beautiful as well. Hats off to Ms. Love for a beautifully conceived book that combines intelligence with design savvy to help us novices find our own individual styles.

Before reading Yes/No Design, I never really thought about my personal taste in decorating, nor did I bother to explore my own creativity. When I found myself with the task of decorating my living room, I felt completely overwhelmed. I had read tons of magazines and asked for the opinions of my friends, as well the opinions of their interior designers. Once I read Diane Love's book, I found myself wondering what was it that I liked when it came to color? Furniture? Fabrics? I had no idea. The exercises in Yes/No design truly helped me, for the first time, locate my own imagination and style. I realized that lemon was going to be the color of my living room, and not yellow. I realized that an airy room was what I wanted, instead of a darker, stuffier one. Yes/ No helped me organize my thoughts, and in the end, helped me to decorate my home in only one way, mine!

Yes/No design was written for the purpose of understanding various elements of design that appeal to each of us. Often we cannot understand why certain colors or styles are comforting and pleasing to the senses. This book acts as an explanation to why we feel the way we do regarding certain environments. I especially enjoyed the workbook section and visual guides. The reference guides are not unlike those found in several european do it yourself guides. This book often has an upmarket almost Ikea-esque feel to it. It encourages readers to use their own surrondings and ideas rather than changing for the sake of another persons style.