Personal Space: Creating A Home That Expresses Your Individuality

by Kate Worsley

Buy new: $29.95 $9.99 Buy used: $0.02

Editorial Reviews

If you like big home-design coffee-table books with sumptuous photos of chic interiors and gushy but vapid copy, and if you like those reductive but irresistible "personality" tests that show up with regularity in magazines like Cosmopolitan and Mademoiselle, you'll most likely love Personal Space. Here, British lifestyle journalist Worsley declares that there are six basic types of living styles--Pure, Maverick, Wild, Sensuous, Easy, and Urban--and throws in a few self-quizzes to help you determine which is right for you. But this flimsy faux paradigm is really just an excuse for a flashy, splashy interiors viewbook that nonetheless offers up some delicious view of the usual spaces: living room, bedroom, bathroom, hall, and kitchen. Some have luminary lineage, like T.E. Lawrence's book room at Cloud Hill, Vanessa Bell's charmingly stenciled-to-death farmhouse, and the Hearst Castle in San Simeon, California, designed by Julia Morgan--although it's frustrating when Worsley refers to famous interiors without showing us good pictures of them (or any at all), and often it's hard to be sure if the famous interiors mentioned in captions are indeed those featured in the photos the captions are keyed to. Add in Worsley's Britishly tortured syntax ("This book is about how you can develop the ability to hold the style of your home together by the force of your personality"), and this admittedly stylish book ends up feeling like a $30 flip through a glossy shelter rag. --Timothy Murphy

Customer Reviews

A must-buy for home design!, 2006-07-31
by Glittering Fool (Florida)

This is the best home design book I've come across because it covers such a wide range of styles. It helps you understand the kind of home you would ideally live in and how not to be constrained by one period or another. I make everyone go through the survey part and we always have such interesting discussions about it!

Express yourself, 2001-10-11

If most interiors books/magazines leave you feeling like someone else is trying to impose their taste on you, this is the book for you. It helps you identify your own personal style (easier said than done I find, especially as most people only get to decorate an apartment once every few years - you have to live with your mistakes). If you've just got one or two whimsical foibles, and a few strong likes or dislikes, it helps you locate these in one of six categories - e.g. pure. maverick, urban. Most of the time - and you can try the exercises on your friends - it gets it exactly right, and, more excitingly, makes you realise things about your taste you never would have guessed otherwise. In short, a lot of fun - and a much cheaper investment than buying something only to discover it doesn't go with any of your other stuff.