The Joy of Home

Interior designer Gilbreath outlines her “genteel” approach to decorating in her stylish debut. She credits her mother for giving her an eye for “practicality and warmheartedness” and her father for “respect for tradition,” and shows how these principles guide her designs. Balance, Gilbreath contends, is essential, and she details how she combined elegance and functionality in a dining room by pairing fabric that’s stain and wear resistant on host chairs with leather side chairs that are tasteful while being durable enough to survive “spaghetti nights and chocolate-covered fingers.” Preaching moderation when it comes to color (“A little can go a long way!”), she shows how she incorporated coral pink accents throughout a house (a rug in the kitchen, lamps in the dining room, and drapes near the backdoor) to “create cohesion while also injecting a bit of levity.” Gilbreath emphasizes that she likes to draw on “clients’ histories and memories” and reflect their personal styles in her work, but she offers disappointingly few details on how client tastes and background influenced the houses depicted. Still, the designs are handsome and restrained, and her breakdown of her thought process enlightens (“Visual separation of an open plan is key,” she writes about using a dining table to split two sitting areas in a living room). It’s an attractive volume, if one hobbled by some notable omissions. (Apr.)