The Furniture Handbook
A Guide to Choosing, Arranging, and Caring for the Objects in Your Home
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected May 21, 2024
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- $13.99
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- Pre-Order
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
The comprehensive guide to living with furniture, no matter your style, from the author of The Interior Design Handbook.
Interior-design sensation Frida Ramstedt changed how we think about designing a harmonious home with her book The Interior Design Handbook. Now she brings that same authoritative and comprehensive focus to this complementary guide that’s all about the most essential and functional items within your home.
No matter your style of home, we all want our spaces to feel inviting and comfortable. And the key to that is quality furniture that supports your lifestyle. The Furniture Handbook shares the foundational rules of choosing, arranging, and caring for the furniture in every room of your home. From selecting the perfect size dining table and seating that fits your family to arranging your living room pieces for the best flow, the basic principles that interior designers use and that everyone should master are provided.
• Know what to pay extra attention to when choosing and rearranging furniture and what common complaints people have so you can avoid them.
• Understand the dimensions and details of furniture design that determine whether a piece is comfortable or not.
• Select quality upholstery that looks beautiful and will endure wear and tear from pets, kids, and daily life.
• Learn how to match the scale of different pieces and plan what goes where before you start moving your furniture, so you never regret the time and money you have invested.
Complete with simple and elegant illustrations, The Furniture Handbook is your key to creating beautiful, personal spaces in your home.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"What are the important things to look for when considering a piece of furniture?" asks Trendenser blogger Ramstedt (The Interior Design Handbook) in this valuable reference book. She recommends paying close attention to ergonomics and anthropometrics (the measurement of the human body and its proportions), suggesting that chair seats should rise 16.5–18 inches above the floor to prevent hunched posturing, and that coffee tables should ideally be four inches higher than the tops of sofa seat cushions. Surveying the pros and cons of various materials, Ramstedt notes the durability of elm and maple, but warns that marble is easily stained by red wine or coffee. She also describes how to spot superior craftsmanship and observes that miter joints (which "join at 45 degrees, between the end wood and the fibers running lengthwise") and inset fronts (when the front of a closed drawer rests on the same plane as the cabinet or dresser's body) require precision carpentry. Ramstedt's comprehensive guidance sometimes belabors the obvious (she warns that "fingerprints and marks show up immediately" on glass-topped coffee tables), but there are still plenty of helpful tips (she recommends three-legged tables for uneven floors because they won't wobble). Readers would do well to consult this before their next interior design purchase.
