Books About House Styles, Architecture, Home Design & Home Planning Ideas

Build It Right! The Home Design Handbook The Complete Guide to Designing Your Own Home The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Feng Shui: Great Kitchens The Not So Big House The New Cottage Home Timeless Way of Building America's Painted Ladies

The information contained in this collection of books will help you learn about different house styles and the home design process. They contain examples of good, and not so good, design ideas that you may want to consider when designing your own home. Building a house in which you will enjoy living starts with the knowledge of form and function. And, the knowledge of specific design features will allow you to create an environment that will meet the needs and wants of the people who will be living there.

• The Home Design Guide Planning, Building or Buying Your Dream Home - by James Shepherd, G. Alan Morledge

• Build It Right!: What to Look for in Your New Home - by Myron E. Ferguson

• The Home Design Handbook: The Essential Planning Guide for Building, Buying, or Remodeling a Home - by June Cotner Myrvang, Steve Myrvang (Contributor)

• The Complete Guide to Designing Your Own Home - by Scott T. Ballard

• Great Kitchens: At Home With America's Top Chefs - by Ellen Whitaker, Colleen Mahoney, Wendy A. Jordan

• The Not So Big House: A Blueprint for the Way We Really Live
  - by Sarah Susanka
  This was a great book to get some ideas of what is needed or what can be simply changed in a small house to make it roomier without the price tag. It was recommended from my interior designer cousin.

• Creating the Not So Big House: Insights and Ideas for the New American Home
  - by Sarah Susanka
  It's rare that a sequel is better than the original. This was one of them. Where The Not So Big House was pretty and pretty much content-free, this book provided real floorplans, and real houses, which I feel helped to communicate Susanka's ideas more clearly.

• The New Cottage Home - by Jim Tolpin

• The New Family Home: Creating the Perfect Home for Today and Tomorrow - by Jim Tolpin, Mary Lathrop (Contributor)

• The New American Cottage: Innovations in Small-Scale Residential Architecture - by James Grayson Trulove (Editor), Il Kim (Editor)
• The New American House: Innovations in Residential Design and Construction: 30 Case Studies - by Oscar Riera Ojeda (Editor), Lucas H. Guerra (Editor)
• The New American House 2: Innovations in Residential Design and Construction: 30 Case Studies - by Oscar Riera Ojeda (Editor)
• A Field Guide to American Houses - by Virginia McAlester, Lee McAlester, Lauren Jarrett (Illustrator)

• Timeless Way of Building
  - by Christopher Alexander
  Provides the opening work in Christopher Alexander's seminal trilogy on architecture (continued in A Pattern Language and The Oregon Experiment). Here he provides a fascinating introduction to the ideas behind the succeeding two books.

• A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction - by Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa, Murray Silverstein

• Time-Saver Standards for Interior Design and Space Planning - by Joseph De Chiara, Julius Panero, Martin Zelnik

• A Practical Guide To Building Your New Home: Decisions To Live With - by Esther DiMarzio, Gail Jacky, Ruth Kulmala

• America's Painted Ladies : The Ultimate Celebration of Our Victorians - by Elizabeth Pomada, Michael Larsen, Douglas Keister (Photographer), Elizabeth Pomanda

• Adirondack Style - by Ann S. O'Leary

• Alpine Interiors/Alpen Interieurs/Interieurs Des Alpes - by Beate Wedekind, Angelika Taschen (Editor), Isabel Varea (Translator)

• American Bungalow Style
  - by Alexander Vertikoff, Robert Milton Winter
  Provides a historical and architectural overview of bungalows, describing room by room the function and importance of each to a bungalow dweller's lifestyle. Beautifully photographed examples of restored houses from throughout North America comprise the majority of the book.

• The Bungalow: America's Arts and Crafts Home
  - by Paul Duchscherer, Douglas Keister
  Great source of inspiration for anyone who is considering doing any sort of architectural project, either interior or exterior, with and Arts and Crafts feeling.

• Inside the Bungalow: America's Arts & Crafts Interior - by Paul Duchscherer, Douglas Keister (Photographer)

• Craftsman Bungalows: 59 Homes from the Craftsman
  - by Gustav Stickley
  Best and most attractive designs from Arts and Crafts Movement publication — 1903–1916 — includes sketches, photographs of homes, floor plans, descriptive text.

• More Craftsman Homes - by Gustav Stickley

• Craftsman Homes: Architecture and Furnishings of the American Arts and Crafts Movement - by Gustav Stickley

• Charleston Style: Past and Present - by Susan Sully, John Blais (Photographer), Josephine Humphreys

• Desert Style
  - by Mary Whitesides
  Based on the idea that a home should exist in harmony with its landscape, author Mary Whitesides shows how materials and textures reflect the land, and how desert hues and cooling tones can be used in beautiful and efficient ways.

• Mediterranean Style: Relaxed Living Inspired by Strong Colors and Natural Materials
  - by Catherine Haig
  Vivid colors, bold simplicity, textural contrasts, stone, tile, and stucco--these are the hallmarks of this refreshingly unpretentious style, which is easy to live with and surprisingly simple to evoke at home.

• Safari Style
  - by Tim Beddow, Natasha Burns
  Exploring 21 spectacular homes in glorious color, Safari Style takes us on an expedition through a fantastic Moorish residence in Kenya, a hotel in Zanzibar masquerading as a Persian palace, an Italianate villa on a former coffee plantation in Nairobi, a tree house hideaway perched in the Ngong hills, and a host of other extraordinary dwellings.

• Tuscany Interiors/Interieurs De Toscane/Toskana Interieurs - by Paolo Rinaldi

• Classic Meets Contemporary - by Henrietta Spencer-Churchill

• Victorian House Designs in Authentic Full Color: 75 Plates from the 'Scientific American-Architects and Builders Edition,' 1885-1894 - by Blanche Cirker (Editor)

• Victorian Domestic Architectural Plans and Details: 734 Scale Drawings of Doorways, Windows, Staircases, Moldings, Cornices and Other Elements - by William T. Comstock (Photographer)

• Bicknell's Victorian Buildings: Floor Plans and Elevations for 45 Houses and Other Structures
  - by A. J. Bicknell
  Complete detailed floor plans and elevations beautifully drawn to scale provide modellers, woodworkers, architects, victorian stylists with authentic primary source.