Looking for a design book? You’re in the right place, we have listed the top design books for you.
If you’re a design fan, chances are your shelves always have a place for the next book (and if you’re like our editors, they’re already spilling off your shelves to side tables, floor, bedside tables, and even beyond).
Fortunately for us, each season comes a new collection of inspiring books from designers, stylists, and historians, providing us with lots of eye candy—and design guidance. Continue reading to find out which items our editors are currently enjoying. And keep checking back since we’ll be upgrading this list with our current picks of top design books every month.
Santa Fe Modern: Contemporary Design in the High Desert
The contemporary architecture of Santa Fe is remarkable when contrasted with the harshness of the desert and traditional adobe homes—a contradiction that author Helen Thompson and photographer Casey Dunn wonderfully portray in Santa Fe Modern.
With every page, you’ll become more enthralled by designers’ use of nature to inform — and contrast — each design. Santa Fe is definitely one of the best coffee table books.
Santa Fe Modern displays the high desert terrain as a suitable location for modernist structures with dramatic, abstracted shapes. Vistas, color, and the light become intrinsic components of the very existence of a house, emboldening a way to have a deep relationship to the vast desert through wide swathes of glass, deep-set entrances, lengthy porches, and courtyards. The featured architects rely on New Mexico’s architecture style, combining historic materials such as adobe with steel and glass, and applying this language to the proportions and needs of today’s world. The houses they constructed are bold representations of architecture that is specific to the New Mexico environment and climate, while still evoking the most rigid forms of modernism.
Home: A Celebration: Notable Voices Reflect on the Meaning of Home
Look no farther than Charlotte Moss’s latest release, Home: A Celebration, which was written in conjunction with No Kid Hungry, and definitely one of the top design books.
In this fascinating set of stories and photos, hear viewpoints on the meaning of home from prominent creatives such as Kelly Wearstler, John Grisham, and Gloria Steinem.
Home: A Celebration is a poetic tribute to the sanctuary and a thoughtful and inspirational book to read again and again. It is filled with genuine experience, comedy, inventiveness, joy, and poignancy. Each notable participant provides an offering—either heartfelt writing or artwork of what home means to them through the lenses of their skills and hobbies. Philosopher Jon Meacham talks about books being the emotional architecture of his life’s dwellings. Oberto Gili, a photographer from northwest Italy, captures the magnificent garden on his house. Chef Alice Waters shares a dish from her backyard garden. Interior designers such as Nina Campbell, Steven Gambrel, and Kelly Wearstler discuss parts of their jobs that define home to them. Other significant works include those by Joan Juliet Buck, Julian Fellowes, John Grisham, and Jill Kargman.
Pacific Natural at Home
Jenni Kayne, an architect and influencer, visits the houses of other creative women who share their basic, yet deliberate design approach in her second book which is one of the top design books. Pacific Natural at Home is a masterclass in style, realism, and ease, with stunning photos of Kayne’s earthy and easygoing aesthetic and talks with the ladies who occupy these homes.
Jenni Kayne exudes an unforced elegance that can be discovered in every detail. Pacific Natural depicts Jenni’s mindful way of life via personal experiences and recommendations, with the setting of Jenni’s home state of California. This fun book, organized by season, is your guidebook to creating unforgettable moments with family and friends. Tabletop ideas, easy crafts, recommendations for having a stocked kitchen and pantry, what to grow in your garden, and nutritious, tasty recipes are included in each chapter. Jenni explains her concept for building tradition and living thoughtfully all year long, from an apple harvesting supper and at-home herb drying in the fall to cocktail parties and DIY gift ideas in the winter, flower arranging in the spring, and a seaside picnic in the summer.
Bunny Mellon Style
Though she was friends with celebrities like Jackie Kennedy Onassis, popular blue-chip artists like Mark Rothko, and designed one of the most renowned gardens in the country (the White House Rose Garden), botanist and philanthropist Bunny Mellon was notoriously secretive. In this deeply personal book, readers get a unique glimpse into her life—and learn how she evolved her style spanning interiors, gardening, clothes, jewelry, and art. Bunny Mellon Style is the narrative of the style icon’s continuing legacy, based on unique research by individuals close to her.
Bunny Mellon Style is the unique biography of one of the twentieth century’s most inadvertently significant women in design. Discover how her style evolved, go inside the family houses she built, get a taste of her collaborations with French fashion and jewelry designers, and begin to comprehend her broad and enduring effect on the world of design.
Collected Interiors: Rooms That Tell a Story
How does one go about creating a coherent room with a diverse selection of décor and art? That is a topic that designer Philip Mitchell seeks to address via his work, which is featured in his debut book, Collected Interiors. Mitchell, a self-described “modern maximalist,” challenges himself to make old things into visually intriguing discoveries; his interiors are recognized for his great eye for texture, color, and scale. The new book is a must-read for design and vintage enthusiasts who want to infuse their own homes with the same amount of individuality and warmth. —Kirby, Nathalie
Philip Mitchell, a modern maximalist designer, demonstrates his skill for integrating collections, sentimental items, contemporary art, and décor in visually inventive surroundings bursting with personality, color, authenticity, and warmth.