Own Your Zone: Maximising Style & Space to Work & Live in the Modern Home

by Ruth Matthews

Create a multifunctional – and stylish – space for working and living at home.

Own Your Zone helps you to create a multifunctional, calm space that works for you and strikes the perfect balance between living and working from home – without compromising on style.

Our home now needs to serve multiple purposes; it needs to be a place we work, work out, wine, dine and chill. With Own Your Zone , learn how to break your home into different zones for work and play. Create an environment that helps you get in the zone at the start of the working day and to easily switch off and wind down when 5.30pm hits.

With more and more of us working from home and it looking likely to become our 'new normal' (firms including Twitter and Facebook have said they will allow employees to work from home forever!), the work-life divide has become hopelessly blurred.

Whether you're working from your bedroom or your kitchen, learn how to carve out a space to help you focus for your 9 to 5, create a book nook for all that important down time or a clutter-free space for yoga – all in the same room.

Genres: Nonfiction

192 pages, Hardcover

Published October 18, 2022

Reviews

[Robin · Rating 4 out of 5]

The colors on the cover point to the modern colors used within. Lovely photos and styling that feels real and livable. Matthews approaches home from functional “zones.” Some good ideas re space and working from home, though reviews made me think there would be more on that than there is. Rather than a questionnaire about style, those pages include a paragraph describing style, materials to use, and sources of inspiration, along with a photo that matches.

[Marina · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Since I started working in the interiors field … I was struck by just how narrow the backgrounds of many in the sector were. In my other day job I would meet many kinds of people, but here there was a visible hegemony within interiors, with design edicts being issued by experts all cut from the same cloth.”
I like Matthews’ down-to-earth, affordable approach. I like the colourful and varied photos. I like that the interiors photographed look like real, British homes, possibly lived in by non-millionaires – just decorated very nicely. Tip takeaway? Consider rehanging your doors to make more space. I read a lot of home décor books, and I like this one.

[Lisa Anita · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is tempting to just flip through this type of book to look at the photos, but I found the text to be interesting as well. I was inspired to make a couple of changes to make my home a better home, and that’s kind of the point, isn’t it?

[Jeanne Baker Stinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bought this in Oslo at Christmastime becasue I was enamored with all the gorgeous interiors we were seeing everywhere and wanted something to remember them by. This is not really Scandinavian but a more general European design book for small spaces. Gorgeous pictures. Less useful text.

[Marisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the selection of photographs. I plan to use some of the author’s tips to zone my open plan home.

[SassieMolassie · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5. Some of the design ideas and execution are fabulous. I love interior design books because you get to see inside peoples homes.