Charlotte Moss Decorates: The Art of Creating Elegant and Inspired Rooms

by Charlotte Moss

The interior designer’s singular vision revealed through an extraordinary collection of her acclaimed rooms. With her inimitable flair for style, Charlotte Moss has led a celebrated career in the interior design world. Recently honored with Elle Decor’s Vision Award, Moss’s design philosophy of "couture living" describes her preference for gracefully curated spaces in which one is meant to live, enjoy, and entertain. Charlotte Moss Decorates affords the reader a glimpse into the methods behind her magic. For each of the rooms featured—from a sumptuous Directoire-style bedroom inspired by the incomparable Pauline de Rothschild to a gentlemen’s billiard room with rich details and a smart tailored feel—Moss breaks down the various stages of her design process, revealing her inspiration and storyboards, as well as sketches and notes she develops for every project. In each chapter, she offers the reader quick "doses" of decorating advice with her signature "Why Not?" decorating maxims. The book also includes Moss’s recommendations for her favorite flowers and fragrances for the final flourish in creating the perfect room. Her interiors, with a nod to both the historical elegance of the past and the modern necessities of today (comfort and livability), are truly sublime spaces. With over 200 sumptuous photographs, Moss graciously invites the reader to be engaged, inspired, and "ready to decorate."

Genres: Interior Design, Nonfiction

224 pages, Hardcover

First published March 22, 2011

Reviews

[Jan Deelstra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Charlotte Moss at her most creative in this one....
This truly is an inspirational book that had me changing EVERYTHING in my personal space. I was hyped up by the possibilities, and almost immediately went to work editing and enhancing every corner and cranny.
If you're familiar with Charlotte Moss, you know she's following her calling. This book is just more proof that she's on the right pathway for sharing her creativity and style.

[Sungyena · Rating 1 out of 5]

Don’t enjoy being a hater but a hard no ty to everything about this book from her questionable style inspo heroes like wallis simpson to the really poor design choices for this interior design book. I cannot stand when ppl suggest using faux books as furniture.

[Trish · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of pretty houses.

[Terri · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not sure how to review a book on decorating. Do I review the book or the decorators style outlined within. It is hard to separate them so I won't even try. I am rating for both in one.
The book itself is lovely. A large, heavy hardcover that would look lovely as a coffee table book (if you are the kind of person who likes people to see that you read decorator books..in case it convinces guests you are pretty well read up on such things and they should be asking your advice on decor).
It is a nicely laid out book including the decorators 'mood boards' for each job. Large images, glossy and good decorating advice throughout.
However I find Charlotte Moss's designs, at least those presented inside this book, unappealing.
Her designs seem too 90's for me and I think this comes mostly from her excessive use of a 90's fabric pattern palette. She doesn't seem to like using multiple pattern in her rooms and instead will match voluminous, dated looking curtains with canopies on beds or chaises or on the lounge chairs, in one case upholstering a whole wicker lounge set to match the curtain fabric. I felt like I was flicking through a 20 year old book! It was ghastly.
Still there were some good decorating going on in the book, only a shame to ruin it with bad fabric choices and in your face matchy matchy.

[Ashley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been choosing decorating books that lead me back to the beginning, back to when I first fell in love with design books. Not interior design itself, mind, that goes back much further, but with the heavy tomes describing fanciful rooms. The thing is, on writing this, I'll say that it wasn't exactly these images that were my catalyst into interior design as a job, but rather, the many references to The Great Decorators and, in turn, their modern progeny, like Charlotte Moss here. What am I really trying to say with far too many words? That even though these types of design books weren't the proverbial jumping off point for me, they were always there to set an example, as if by osmosis. Or more realistically, imagined memory, referenced by others and in that way, made familiar to me. And now, for the first time I'm reading and seeing them for myself. Yes, the rooms designed and described are show pieces for the Haves of the world, but they do impart practical enough advice, not necessarily to be taken literally in the particulars, but to be interpreted through imagination and a resourceful creativity.

[Juliann Whicker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gorgeous pictures. I felt a little bit silly after reading how many photographers, assistants, etc. she needed to get her house like this for photos. Not realistic, but very inspiring. Love her color schemes. She has a butler and a maid.

[Karen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not as wonderful as I had hoped it would be. Show-offy descriptions of her decorator showhouse rooms. Nothing to be replicated or tried at home. Disappointing.