Book Review: Hotel Chic at Home
I LOVE to travel, that is no secret. I clearly also love design.
The excitement in travel for me often lies in the exploration of wonderfully designed spaces and hotels. Sara Bliss has broken down the elements of what makes a wonderful hotel and how to achieve that at home.
The images take you around the globe sharing the most stunning spaces imaginable. This is a must have for the design obsessed traveler.
Inspired Design Ideas from Glamorous Escapes
Including bedrooms, baths, outdoor spaces, dining rooms, dens, and even children’s rooms and foyers from over 130 of the most charming and trendy boutique hotels across the globe (from India to Brazil, Thailand, Tuscany, Hollywood, and East Hampton)—Hotel Chic at Home is a dazzling encyclopedia of interior design ideas to make a functional everyday space into a dreamy escape.
What if ordinary life could feel more like vacation? Dinner might be outdoors, for a view that you’ve journeyed hundreds of miles to see. A room might transport you to another, more genteel era. A serene moment might be found anywhere, from a swinging hammock, to a luxurious bathroom oasis, or an intimate corner with a velvet wing chair.
Travel and design blogger Sara Bliss shows readers how the experiences of adventure, freedom, sophistication, and calm found in the world’s most unique hotels can be recreated on a personal scale, almost anywhere. After all, the most successful boutique hotels have gained their competitive edge by doing just the same—reflecting their rustic or exotic settings without resorting to “Disney-or-Dubai” clichés; enhancing dark spaces with bold pattern, color, and lighting; maximizing small spaces with smart furniture layout; and taking advantage of creative ideas from some of the best interior designers working today.
Bliss provides practical takeaways about how to extract one or two elements from each room, with tips for any style and budget. A symmetrical arrangement of mirrors creates a show-stopping backdrop for a bed, as at the Viceroy Santa Monica; an oversized striped carpet can draw the eye straight out to the view, as at the Grace Bay Club in Turks and Caicos; classic subway tile becomes a graphic statement when arranged diagonally, as at Hotel Bachaumont in Paris; and a simple pattern painted on standard-issue concrete floors can create a durable, playful take on an outdoor rug, as at The Sixty SoHo in New York City.
Interviews with eight of today’s top names in interior design, including Michele Bonan, Alessandra Branca, Christiane Lemieux, Joe Lucas, Jason Nixon and John Loecke, Mary McDonald, John Robshaw, and Tilton Fenwick reveal what they love about their favorite hotels around the globe—an added bonus to the pleasure of picking up Hotel Chic at Home: a celebration of travel, of design, and of the immense possibilities of creating something inspired by both, but all your own.
Sara Bliss grew up living in Southeast Asia and Manhattan, and is happiest when she is discovering a new place. Sara’s articles on travel and design have appeared in Travel & Leisure, Town & Country, House Beautiful, Yahoo Travel, and Refinery 29. Sara has written seven books, including Exotic Style: Great Ideas for Bringing Global Style Home. She is the founder of the weekly travel and design site HotelChicBlog.com, which has a devoted readership in over 180 countries.
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