Ethan Allen's New American Style: Home Decorating Guide

In Ethan Allen's New American Style, Vivia Chen and the design staff at Ethan Allen offer a much-needed alternative vision to the intimidating, otherworldly decorating gurus: a new American home that's completely accessible and affordable without sacrificing flair or personality. The core of this vision is something that's all too often missing from decorating advice: a practical, down-to-earth approach that recognizes your time and budget constraints, and that your desire for style shouldn't demand an all-or-nothing commitment of your resources.

Ethan Allen's New American Style is a cross section of just that: new American style. Whether that style is bohemian eclectic, traditional colonial, or modern minimalism, it's represented here-and not as a set of impractical, rigid mandates, but as suggestions, building blocks onto which you'll add your own taste.

So Ethan Allen suggests a real-world approach to the real-life challenge of decorating your home: Be realistic. Determine your priorities, set a budget, establish a schedule. Recognize that your home will evolve over time, as you and your family will. Admit that every choice isn't necessarily the final one and so needn't be unduly labored over. Accept that you will not have achieved your ideal home by the time your in-laws arrive for dinner on Friday night.

Whether that ideal home is a rustic seaside cottage, a rambling wood-frame Victorian, or a stark urban loft, Ethan Allen's New American Style will help you get there-not by dictating your choices, but by helping you realize your personal vision. Beginning with the foyer and examining every room of the house, from the living and dining rooms back to the kitchen, upstairs to the bedrooms, and on to the home office, the bathroom, and even to an outdoor room, this book tackles every space you might need to fill.

With this sensible approach, you will end up with your dream home. And you'll avoid the innumerable nightmares, from financial to emotional, that can paralyze you. Most important, you'll have fun. And isn't that what decorating should be about?

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