Pottery Barn Living Rooms (Pottery Barn Design Library) (ISBN 0848727592)

Amazon.com Review:
The traditional living room has increasingly given way to the idea of a "great room"--a space adaptable enough to entertain guests, encourage playful children, provide a comfortable place to view videos, and, yes, even accommodate the solitary reader. Pottery Barn Living Rooms leads such a reader through the basic issues and specific choices available to anyone wanting to re-do an existing space or design a new living room. Each of its ten chapters is devoted a specific subject (color, texture, lighting); all chapters begin with an overview of the topic, followed by virtual tours of rooms--both large and smaller, formal and casual—complete with gorgeous photos. The accompanying text goes on to explain how the real-life owners of these rooms created a sense of intimacy, a dramatic effect with lighting, or a convivial place in which people are likely to congregate. Whether you have high ceilings or low, a large budget or a limited one, this book is valuable for anyone looking for sensible ideas in creating a room perfect for all kinds of living. --David Bombeck

Middle of the road:
I have read/used three of the Pottery Barn books listed in order of my opinion of them: Baths, Living Rooms, and Bedrooms. Baths was very good, with beautiful photographs, interesting and innovative ideas, and some useful design advice. Most of the book provided a several page showcase for an individual bath with discussion of what made it special. Living rooms was OK. It's content was more canned, but it still had some inspiration and enough ideas that were useful that although I would not put it amongst the best such books, it was worth an hour or two to browse. Bedrooms hit the bottom of the list for me. The content seemed especially canned. The ideas were not fully developed and most of them appeared to me more appropriate to someone's first apartment than an established home (so it just needs the right audience?). Lot's of the pictures involved just using eclectic pieces and did not involve actually developing a decorative theme.

Pottery Barn Living Rooms (Pottery Barn Design Library):
GREAT book and great series (all the Pottery Barn Design Library books)! I have an interior design background, and this series is the best I've ever read --- great design and storage ideas that are easy to do and the ideas are multi-faceted, so you could use in another room, etc.

Beautiful, Interesting and Helpful.:
I am rather insecure when it comes to interior design, yet I have the desire to have a beautiful home on a budget. This book helped me not only identify a color palate for my living room, but gave me ideas to easily change the look for the change of seasons. It helped my husband and I create our own casual, yet polished look that we are proud to call home!

A Good book for living room design Ideas:
I really have enjoyed this book. Though I have not found every page useful, there are enough ideas to make it worth the purchase. The chapters cover many important design aspects in a living room: your style, space, color, texture, furnishings, lighting, windows, storage, accessories and display. Be aware that it is naturally focused to the Pottery Barn style of decorating - which can be somewhat generic. But there are enough inspirational ideas that you can interpret and make them work for you whether you shop at Pottery Barn or not.

Achieving Calm:
I think Pottery Barn livingrooms gives clear, memorable design ideas that all point to achieving a sense of calm in your nest. Beyond that they show you how to mix textures, periods and shapes to make your space interesting. And maybe best of all they give us rooms that are nicely edited so that every special detail, or object's qualities can be appreciated. It's a very good guide to good taste.