Reviewed: The Perfectly Imperfect Home [Book]

Bonney vs Needleman sounds like a landmark court case. After reading Design*Sponge last week, I had to give design books another go. While I enjoyed flipping through it, I emerged none the wiser. And I need help! I’ve got six thousand miles of blank walls to cover, plus a very yellow bedroom. Someone, somewhere, is going to instill an interest in the design process. I turn next to The Perfectly Imperfect Home: How to Decorate and Live Well by Deborah Needleman (2011)

First impression: Cracked book open in middle….

Whaaaaat the……..!! Where are the pictures?!?!? Water colours?!? Sissy paintings? You’ve got to be joking. This isn’t going to work. Thin ice, Deborah, you’re on thin ice.

With that, I resolved to carry on a conversation with Deborah (not Ms Needleman, not ‘the author’), for the rest of the book. This is how it went.

Me: So, Deb, can I call you Deb? Last week I read Grace Bonney’s book. It was a nice afternoon ‘n all, but I’m still no fan of design. I have a once-ugly, now-undesigned apartment… can you help?

Deb: “While this is a book about things, I have tried to approach them from the perspective of what these things can offer us” (page 14).

Me: Cool! Offering me sandwich would be a good start, are you hungry? Hey, so, is it a coincidence you have a book out just a month or so after the Design Sponge one? Hers is ahead of yours on Amazon… can we expect fisticuffs?

Deb: “Hanging lights (like all overheads) are co-conspirators, not lone gunmen” (page 30).

Me: Sounds violent, but helpful. So… this book, it’s all about my apartment? You’re actually going to teach me things instead of sneaking me in through the back door of a stranger’s house?

Deb: “You can exaggerate the mood in an entry, especially a tiny one” (page 35).

Me: Exaggeration is my territory. I’ll tell Paolo to add it to the list! What’s next?

Deb: “A Modern-Day Conundrum” (page 39).

Me: How to trick guests to enter through the entry hall and not through the kitchen door? That’s no kind of conundrum I know, Deb. It’s sounds like a delightful predicament. Can you lower your lessons to bottom-dwelling apartment creatures?

Deb: “Framed pictures leaning against the wall or against a mirror show that the house is… [a] work in progress” (page 64).

Me: Now that’s the stuff! Nothing too permanent and even less effort. Deb, I think we can be lasting friends.

Deb: “[T]o create a beautiful home, you need a bit of ugly” (page 97).

Me: It’s true!! It’s so true.

As I got to know Deb, I liked her language – words like frippery, paucity and passementerie – and I liked best when she let her informed tone turn slightly irreverent: ”by now you’ve realized that I admire a lot of dead decorators” (page 251). I rolled my eyes in parts, getting a bit sad in the ‘glamification’ chapter (‘buy this, buy that, shiny, shiny, shiny’).

There’s minimal acknowledgement of small spaces (and budgets), and at times it gets very ‘Kirsten-Dunst-in-Mona-Lisa-Smile’. Society housewife, keeping up appearances. I skimmed the part on ‘table linen wardrobe’ (page 168) and gritted teeth at ”every room needs at least one good antique to lend it a sense of stability” (page 208). And the ducats, Deborah? It’s a quality approach with good theory, whenever my ‘actual grown-up life’ with fripperies like ‘stairs’ and ‘more than 2 windows’ begins.

Elsewhere professionalism loses me – the tone and content urges ‘designey-styley people’ that, oh yes they can break The Rules. Dare you do it? Hang a child’s drawing above the fireplace? Deb, in-house art production is the only reason I’d HAVE kids. So these, and similar suggestions are met with a slow nod (page 68).

Here’s how Deb won me back: It’s endlessly encouraging – ‘try this! try that!’. Every other page has a clever trick or guiding principle. Many of them I can use right away:

• “When mixing patterns, the rule is to connect through color and contrast through scale” (page 90). Ah-ha!
• Thirty inches is a good height from the floor to the top of your mattress (page 102).
• And the law of threes: ”Repeat a colour in the pillows in at least three things around the room” (page 92). Heh! I can count to three.

I’m sorry I’m a 21st century heathen, Deborah, I didn’t mean it.

1. Sarah calls it an antidote for trendy magazines’ “$2000 toilet paper holders” {Full review}.
2. Igor included some nice photos of the book’s pages {Full review}.
3. Lisa mentions her favourite part of the book, which I hadn’t even noticed - ”[I]t’s this last little blurb on the dust jacket that really touched me: ‘This book is about moving stuff around in your house so it looks better.’ ~Nathaniel Weisberg, age 10, author’s son”.
4. Nancy has a comparison shot of a room photo & the book’s painted version.
5. As well, Jenn posted photos of Deborah’s NY state home … a woman with a swimming pool like that? I’ll do anything she says.

 Covers Canada? No, but that’s irrelevant unless you intend to shop from the resource list (or book the services of a woman named Bunny).

1 reason to read it? Unlike Design*Sponge, Perfectly Imperfect made me want to try a little harder with the bathroom’s decoration – made it seem worth the effort – and it distilled the process. Deb asserts it’s nothing more difficult than a few things on the wall, plus baskets and bins and a sensational shower curtain. I can do that.

Conclusion: I read it cover-to-cover in a few hours and actually want to spend the weekend ‘jollifying’, ‘cozifying’ and adding quirk. (Or maybe we have enough of the last one). Mr. Chin gives Perfectly Imperfect 8/10.