Outdoor Decorating and Style Guide: Fresh Ideas and Inspiration for Making Beautiful Outdoor Rooms

Today’s gardeners are cultivating a new level of comfort. They don’t just want to furnish their outdoor living space; they want to decorate it to reflect personal style and taste. But how do you create the equivalent of the family "great room" in the open air?

The Outdoor Decorating and Style Guide is the ultimate how-to guide for applying the principles of interior design—for furnishings, accessories, lighting, color, flooring, and walls—to the great outdoors. This comprehensive guidebook takes readers step by step through the entire design process, helping readers with visualizing the desired type of outdoor room; choosing the materials, colors, and furniture that work best with a preferred style; and arranging, decorating, and putting it all together. Full-color photos depict a variety of outdoor rooms, from romantic porches to formal patios, and from exotic huts to elegant garden rooms, with descriptive advice on achieving each look.

From coordinating colors to garden palettes and choosing weather-resistant fabrics for outdoor seating, this savvy guide shows how to transform any garden room or backyard living space into a fabulous outdoor haven.

Nora Richter Greer is an architecture and design critic. She has written for numerous magazines and newspapers and has contributed to and authored more than a dozen books on architecture, urban design, and interior design. She resides in Washington, D.C.