Kelly Hoppen Style: The Golden Rules of Design

Fans of Hoppen's East-meets-West design aesthetic will welcome her latest coffee-table contribution, which focuses on interiors that are not ""built on the wow factor,"" but rather attempt to be ""cocoons of security and warmth."" Still, the book possesses plenty of glamour. A British interior designer with a line of interior products, a London boutique and offices in London and Paris, Hoppen knows her audience and she gives them the fantasy room tour that they desire. There's plenty of chrome, dark wood and red roses in the designs pictured, and most rooms are decorated with natural elements, like seashells or flowers. Unfortunately, Hoppen's style can also feel quite impersonal--it varies little from client to client, so that the habitations pictured often seem more like showrooms than homes. The two sections on lighting provide some of the most useful tips in the book, and Knapp's striking photographs do a particularly good job of capturing that difficult subject. Hoppen's spare and innovative approach to design does not extend to her writing, however, which is flat, repetitive and cliched. Her attempts at description are often over-wrought: ""In New Zealand, it was the feeling of wind on my face that inspired curtains so gossamer light that they would feel like wind stroking the skin."" The ""golden rules"" of the subtitle are erratically distributed throughout the book and are equally uneven in their quality and practicality. Many are really glorified captions: ""Black lacquered parquet flooring makes a dramatic runner across the white marble floor."" Others focus on Hoppen's area of specialty, managing the client-designer relationship; there are five rules on handling drawings and blueprints alone. Over 250 color photographs.