In Rooms to Inspire twelve trendsetters bring a fresh point of view to creating interiors for a spectrum of living spaces-from houses to apartments and country retreats. This selective group-some professional decorators and others renowned for their taste making-includes Marian McEvoy, Kelly Wearstler, Muriel Brandolini, Jonathan Adler, and Simon Doonan. They offer their own very personal perspectives and advice using their own homes as examples-many published here for the first time. These intimate and inviting, absolutely non-formulaic interior spaces express the personal style of these highly creative individuals. Today's designers show how to experiment freely with every detail. This extraordinary sampling features the designers' own homes, ranging stylistically from the theatrical to eclectically modern. Common design issues such as color, balance, and comfort, as well as innovative approaches to kitchens and bathrooms are addressed. The designers also offer their favorite resources. This inspirational guide for professionals and novices encourages us to infuse our living spaces with style and personality.
Author Annie Kelly is also a decorator, design writer, and magazine editor.
With her husband, photographer Tim Street-Porter, she is based in Los Angeles, and has a second home two hours outside of New York in Litchfield, Connecticut.
Born in Australia, Kelly first trained as an artist. In 1993 she started work in Los Angeles as a decorator, and her projects have been published in a variety of design magazines: House and Garden, House Beautiful, Australian Vogue Living, Elle Decor, Metropolitan Home, English House and Garden, Traditional Home, Country Living and World of Interiors. Kelly's renovation of Frank Lloyd Wright's La Miniatura in Pasadena was featured as a cover story in Architectural Digest. She is currently working on several decorating projects in New York and Los Angeles.
In the 1990s she was a contributing editor on House & Garden (USA), and worked as a stylist on shoots for them, as well as Town and Country, Western Interiors and many others.
Kelly's design work has been featured in numerous books including three written and photographed by her husband Tim Street-Porter. They are Freestyle (Stewart Tabori and Chang,) Casa Mexicana (Stewart Tabori and Chang) and The Los Angeles House (Clarkson Potter,) as well as Be Your Own Decorator (Rizzoli) by Susanna Salk.
She has been a guest in the past on many decorating television shows, and apart from her books, writes about design and decoration for national magazines both here and in other countries. These include World of Interiors, the Robb Report, German, French and Russian Architectural Digest, and Belle magazine in Australia. .
Kelly is currently reviewing design books for the on-line website magazine "Introspective," at the furniture-selling website 1stdibs.com where she writes for a column called "Required Reading," as well as putting together designer profiles for "Style Compass."
Her first book was Casa Mexicana Style in 2006(Stewart Tabori & Chang,) then Rooms to Inspire,(Rizzoli)followed by Casa San Miguel in 2008.Two more books in the series came out in 2009 and 2010, both from Rizzoli- Rooms to Inspire in the Country and Rooms to inspire in the City.
In 2011 she produced Litchfield County Style also for Rizzoli, which recently won the New England Society Book Prize and the latest is Rooms to Inspire (Rizzoli) by the Sea, published in 2012.
