Interior Designers

Horrors of horrors -- peach corduroy upholstery on a sofa and armchairs sitting amid Chippendale furniture, Queen Anne mirrors, Ming screens and modern lamps. This combination in a Pebble Beach home was considered "shocking" in 1926, but the eclectic trademark style of interior decorator Frances Elkins has profoundly influenced home aesthetics ever since. "During the five decades since Frances Elkins's death, she has been fittingly revered as one of the 20th Century's most legendary decorators.

What type of interior designer writes a book about television? Someone who once believed those weren't characters on the tube but real people. Someone like Diana Friedman. "When I was watching television as a kid, my older sister used to tell me that if I could see them, then they could see me too," says Friedman, 33, a freelance writer who, as a child in Manhattan, fixated on "The Brady Bunch" kids as well as their four-bedroom, three-bath California split-level house.

"MADE in the USA," the reality show in which inventors vie to get their product on the Home Shopping Network, premiered last week and already it has a winner: judge Karim Rashid. Unlike his fellow judges -- Atari Inc. and Chuck E. Cheese founder Nolan Bushnell and Miracle Mop inventor Joy Mangano -- the bespectacled Rashid, shown below, has earned the right to deliver dismissive comments like a dapper Dr. Evil.

The choice of color is crucial to the success of any decorating project, according to the author, a professor of color theory at the New York School of Interior Design. It has been that way since our prehistoric ancestors began painting their caves with earth pigments. Not surprisingly, this book reads like a textbook as it traces the use of color from those caveman days to our modern times.

This group of design professionals had good intentions in trying to educate consumers about interior design, but the title of this downloadable, 16-page booklet is misleading. There really isn't any information about how to design your space. Instead, it's all about how to hire a professional interior designer to do it for you. The booklet lists many good reasons to hire one -- it's tricky enough to select the right color, fabric, furniture and art.

Jonathan Fong had never decorated anything before moving into his Santa Monica townhouse 12 years ago. "I have never been by nature a particularly creative person," says the former vice president at Suissa Miller Advertising. "I was into math and science as a kid--I'm Asian." The all-thumbs Fong needed to find a way to fix up his place that would be easy and economical, he says. "I kept asking myself, 'What can I do on my own that will look really cool and not cost a lot of money?'

Eric Brun-Sanglard, who is blind, relies on other senses to visualize interiors. He taps his feet to get a feel for the scale of rooms, he absorbs the sun on his face and hands to know when and where the light falls and he touches everything -- walls, windows, doorknobs, moldings, tiles, fabrics and plants -- to literally get a feel for a home's shape, texture and dimension.

The book jacket touts Mary Gilliatt's latest as a "comprehensive source of information that will help you navigate all decisions related to home decor...." Wonderful! But wait, where are kitchen countertops, bamboo flooring or advice on recessed lighting-versus-lamps? The disappointment wanes after the discovery of engrossing short biographies of influential architects and designers (don't expect to find any up-and-comers) and synopses of styles and movements.