Customer Reviews

Country Living Your House, Your Home: Randy Florke's Decorating Essentials

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Some many of these books are cookie cutter and make the same suggestions. Randy has a great eye for furniture placement and antique display. He encourages you to mix and match and create your own unique style. There is nothing more thrilling to have decorated your home and feel confident in what you have done. This book will guide you through a process most people fear.

I love Randy Florke's style of decorating, but didn't enjoy this book. If you read Country Living magazine, the photos in this book will be all too familiar. I expected that there'd be some photos from the magazine, but this book had absolutely nothing new. The text is also disappointing and seems to be written for readers who've never given a thought to decorating prior to opening the book. It's hard to imagine that fans of this simple, yet sophisticated style would need to be told that "paintings add color to white walls," or "when furnishing a porch, refrain from using old automobile seats or broken down couches."

Having grown up in the country it was absolutely astounding to see Randy Florke capture so beautifully the joy of country living. His taste in design is perfect and his respect for blending great design into being compatible with the beauty of nature is amazing. He gives country living a respectablity and beauty that few others have been able to achieve. A perfect gift for those who cherish their memories from country living in childhood or to those who today have the joy of living in the country and wish to do so with taste and class.

I'm sure this gentleman Randy Florke is immensely talented. I certainly LOVE the rooms featured in Country Living magazine. But I honestly didn't find many ideas I could actually use in my small 1300 sq. ft. 1800's house with 7 ft. ceilings.
I'd have to agree with Nancy's review that many of the ideas are not practical. How are my kids going to sit on those metal chairs? And with dogs, I could NEVER put out the kind of accessories lower than 3 ft. or they'd be munchie snacks. I guess I was hoping for more inspiration.
I did like his use of large paintings in small spaces to open up that one room. Beautiful style, but not a real how-to book. Show the problem, and show the solution. That's the kind of book I need.

This is an equisite example of how being "real" is more elegant then trying to "keep up with the jones's."The book was affordble and easy to follow. Randy is from a farm in Iowa.He understands design on a budget and simple elegance. This is a fresh viewpoint on all these staid tired makeover "wondershows" I can find elegance at a flea market and mix it with my custom couches and create my own style. How fresh, how new. People have been taking flea market finds (yes garden furniture) and mixing it with custom pieces in Europe for years. Randy Florke brings this simple elegance home to America. I love what the book stands for and will recommend it to all my clients. Randy Florke's fresh approach in a market that is saturated with alot of nothingness shows me that there still is creativity out there. I am excited to try color, as Randy does on many a wall, and, take chances with fabric and new ideas for old simple items. This book is your design,"must have." I believe in his crisp clear vision in a business that has one to many experts and not enough down home truth.

For me, there is too much poor photography throughout. Some photos are the quality to be expected, however, too many are out of focus, or have too little depth of field for the purpose of the photo, many contain a lot of noise/grain, some apparently are images that were originally small, then printed larger, creating a poor quality image, many were photographed with poor lighting, some could use color correction for the lighting (i.e. on some photos they failed to adjust the color temperature of the photo correctly leaving a few images shot with incandescent lights looking unnaturally yellow - which brings up one more problem: using a single incandescent light as the main light source, which not a good idea when trying to create a beautiful photo, and this was done more than once).

I LOVE Randy Florke and his amzing sense of home and comfort! If you're into status and pretention, you'll be disappointed. If you're into warm homes filled with love and laughter, this is for you. Randy makes ordinary things come alive, proving that decorating is more about what's in your heart than the size of your wallet.

Loved everything about this book. He has a lot of interesting observations and ideas. I found it extremely inspiring for my home. We are a family of 5 with dogs and I appreciate his use of the found objects. Not only is it economical but if it withstood use by another family then it can take what we have to dish out. And on the plus side the older stuff is much more interesting looking. Highly recommend this book.

I'm liking Your House Your Home so much that I just ordered another copy for a friend who I know will love it also.

I thought it was the most practical and down-to-earth and realistic decorating book that I've ever seen. The photographs are beautiful, and the advice the kind of thing a real person can easily use.

I own almost every book on country homes and decorating published over the past 5 years. This by far is the essential and best. The text is really great - hits the spot. Five Stars!