Call It Home: The Details That Matter

by Amber Lewis, Shade Degges (Photographer), Cat Chen (Contributor)

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Through gorgeous photography and heartfelt essays, the interior designer and author of Made for Living reveals her detail-oriented approach to renovating, decorating, and building a beautiful home.

The details can make a room. The bullnose edge of a marble countertop. The wood grain and color of the flooring. The particular pleat of the drape. Amber Lewis, the esteemed designer known for her signature California-inspired style, obsesses over the tiniest of features to create her eclectic, laid-back look. In Call It Home, she shares her secrets to choosing and applying fabric, paint, finishes, tile, flooring, and more for a beautifully designed home, shortcutting the often-overwhelming decision-making process. 

Amber walks you through eight new homes she designed—including her own—and the thought processes behind every major choice. Whether you're decorating one room, renovating your entire house, or planning new construction, she shares how to approach a project from start to finish, guiding you on how to find the right team so you can get the perfect results. Then she takes you through mountain retreats and surfside homes, dreamy escapes she’s created by pulling inspiration from the surrounding property for a look that’s unique to each home. Through personal essays, you’ll learn how she set about the project, what challenges her team faced, and the materials she used to achieve the finished result.

With more than 200 gorgeous images of livings rooms, kitchens, dining rooms, entryways, bedrooms, and baths, you'll have photographs of Amber’s details on hand when you're ready to create your own collection of stunning spaces—and call it home.

Genres: Design, Nonfiction, Coffee Table Books, Interior Design, Art

271 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 17, 2023

Reviews

[Teres · Rating 4 out of 5]

Admittedly, Amber Lewis' designs are not for everyone. But if you're a fan of natural organic elements — think stone, wood, raw metals — mixing vintage with contemporary, and layers of texture, you're in the right place.

I'd move in to any one of the homes featured in this book in a heartbeat!

Along with ample photos that showcase Lewis' projects, we hear from the designer herself on how she went about making each of her decisions.

Bonus: Lewis generously shares her sources with us.

Eye candy!

[Felicia A. Collins · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sadly this book didn’t speak to me at all which was disappointing as I loved her first book, Made for Living. Where Made For Living felt more attainable, relatable, interesting, down-to-earth, personal and unique in design I found this book full of unapproachable (read for extremely wealthy people only), stuffy, and try hard. The designs, while technically stunning, just didn’t have personality to me and instead looked like a collection of her highest end projects where a ton of money was spent to achieve an outcome very few people could ever afford to attain. Made for Living had practical information for one to apply to their own home, while Call It Home had very little practical information and instead read like a portfolio of a designers most costly builds. Wanted to love but just couldn’t.

[elizabeth sawyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gorgeous photography. Down to earth writing to explain the design details of the projects. If you love texture, neutrals and complimenting the beauty of nature out the windows you will love this book. High end, comfortable design.

[Relyn · Rating 1 out of 5]

Thoughts while reading:
- So, so, so many words!
- SO MUCH brown.
- This entire book has a single color palette, and it isn't mine. Or inspiring.
- Waaaaay too much bouclé.
- What's with all the faux fur?
- People really pay you to design this boring crap?
- Someone really published your book?

OY!

[Meredith · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very neutral style throughout. The pages with a pale beige colour background and white text are extremely difficult to read. Those with vision difficulties will struggle.

[Carolyn Hill · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars rounded up. This is a beautiful book full of luscious photography in Amber Lewis’s signature style, which is a Californian style mix of neutral and earthy tones and textures with natural wood and stone. The look is fairly consistent from home to home, while accommodating the dictates of different settings, including beach and mountain, and the individual homeowners. The reader will quickly figure out that these are no ordinary homes. The first home we come to in the “All Good in the Neighborhood” chapter is 11,000 square feet of new construction, and the next house is 8,000 plus square feet of a totally remodeled house on a lake in Los Angeles. But the showstopper, or should I say showstoppers, is a pair of new homes for an extended family on the bluffs of Carmel, California, where Lewis is not exaggerating when she says “that this is one of the most beautiful, not to mention coveted, plots of land on the West Coast and - dare I say it? - maybe in all of America.” It is an iconic place and view sandwiched between the coast and the famed Pebble Beach Golf Club. The gorgeous large mountain houses depicted are vacation homes. In other words, these are homes of the extremely wealthy, and there’s not anything here that the overwhelming majority of Americans could begin to afford besides maybe a vase, chair, lamp, or throw pillow. As with all high end design publications, these homes are aspirational and are not for the masses. The kitchens and bathrooms are spectacular, but understated in a quietly opulent way. The look is a little more modern and streamlined, not fancy at all, but the quality materials and details such as classic inset cabinetry, as well as the expanse of space are the tell. I particularly love all the wood elements like wood ceilings and beams, light wood cabinetry and wide plank floors, as well as distressed rustic reclaimed posts and beams. This gives the houses more of an organic, natural look that, for me, harks back to the seventies (remember earth tones?), though there is nothing outdated here, as well as farther back to a more European or Belgian rustic style. The book includes a house in the North Carolina mountains which I found particularly interesting as it’s where I live, that shows California style with some rustic elements can work here. She also includes her own home that was either a tear-down or gut remodel with addition (she doesn’t really make it clear). She relates the typical designer woes of having yourself as a client when you’re aware of all the choices available. While she planned for the long term, she no longer lives in this house, a casualty, I would assume, of a recent divorce. She doesn’t allude to this in the book, though, and it makes you think it was all for the happy ever after and rather poignantly sad to realize she and her family didn’t stay here long term after all the hard work and planning every detail that went into it. She does confide in her difficulties upon completing the house - a diagnosis of MS just as the pandemic shut the world down. Lewis aspires to create a timeless look, and I think much of her design qualifies while still being contemporary, though certainly some elements follow trends. The consistency of her style in these photos can partly be attributed to the use of her own furniture line, a way to increase her bottom line. I noticed certain styles of sofas, chairs, and a bed repeated, and she obviously loves boucle. She also custom designs furniture pieces, another high end designer tactic for clients who can well afford the cachet of a bespoke piece. Whether her style is truly timeless, only the future will tell.

As for the text, Lewis has fortunately toned down her conversational style somewhat compared to her last book and her Instagram account so as not to be so California girl. She starts with some guidelines for designers that could apply to homeowners as well. As the title of the book conveys, she points out the details she finessed. She tells a bit about each project and its goals. Within the chapters on individual homes, she’ll have a page of typically four examples from various homes of a particular feature such as stairs, bunk rooms, tubs, and hardware finishes with an opposite page of text. Unfortunately, the white text on a pale greige background is very hard to read.

In all, this is a beautiful book illustrating some gorgeous features, but be aware that these designs, with the exception of a few more modest guest bedrooms, are for those with considerable means.

[Carolyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

To be clear, the interiors are have very beautiful elements and they are all thoughtful and very expensive. I love many of the things in here: that brass and alabaster chandelier! But these interiors are SO BEIGE. Brown wood, brown leather, gray stone, greige upholstery, brownish brass, brownish furniture, crystal decanter full of brown whiskey. Sometimes she’ll add a maroon chaise or muted green curtains. Even the books on the bookshelves have to beige and gray. She uses so little art and so little color—sometimes just the vase of flowers.

I am going to go hang up my summer curtains with the hot pink tassel trim now.

[Kelli · Rating 5 out of 5]

Again her books just make for amazing decor books. I love that it’s a rich browns, tans — light and airy colors. I love neutrals in decor with pops of unique pieces, so Amber’s style has always been perfect to me. It’s so warm and inviting. She makes rooms the kind of rooms I want to curl up in with a book and read. Her carpet designs are so good. Plus her use of warm wood pieces is something I view as timeless. I love a good white but all white just gets old after a time, so I love how Amber uses wood in her rooms.

[Monique · Rating 1 out of 5]

Same same old. All her interiors look alike, including her own. Same bouclé furniture, not conducive to pets and children, same colours, same accents. Seeing one interior is fine, several of the same just lead to boredom.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Inspiring ideas. Beautiful photography. I also loved how she weaves her own story into the final home she showcases. Simply lovely.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full of admiration and respect for Amber Lewis. As a business owner, designer, mom, and human being in the world: I think she is absolutely incredible.

[Jessica · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a pleasant distraction though the copy read sometimes too much like having to wade through the backstory of a recipe. Very much in that organic neutrals category of design and décor. Lushly photographed but staged to the point where the spaces were devoid of any personality and where not a speck of unauthorized color is allowed, even in book covers. It would be hard to get meaningfully inspired because the raw money needed for these spaces and locations was a distraction. It would have been nice to see more variety of homes and lifestyles, otherwise it just seems like you are paying for a very expensive brochure of services you will not be able to utilize. Save yourself the money and at a bookstore or get it from the library.

Sidenote on book design- some of the pages were nearly impossible to read due to the use of white text on gray or similar backgrounds. Baffling choice.

[Lauren Csaki · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you are really into her style, you’ll love looking at this beautiful book for inspiration. But all of the houses and rooms look so incredibly similar, so there isn’t a variety if that one style doesn’t speak to you. The book feels more like an advertisement for the design firm, featuring select high-end projects, than a book about design. Lovely to look at, but very little of substance to take away and apply to your own design projects. These design monographs so often suffer from that limitation. Oddly enough the one project that has a slightly different style than all the others was her own house, featured at the end of the book.

[Tina · Rating 2 out of 5]

I guess everyone is different when it comes to design. In my opinion this book was not what I’d hoped for. A lot of Amber Lewis designs feel very drab. Very 70s and I didn’t get a great feeling reading the book or seeing the designs. They actually are quite depressing on a whole.
There are grey pages in this book with white printing…almost impossible to read.
So I’m an Ali Heath fan and I have to say this book doesn’t hold a candle to her books unfortunately
I’m glad I didn’t buy this book and only rented it from the library. The designs are just very drab….thats my opinion

[Flo Rouk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully curated interior decors. It’s just that they all look similar (understandably: it’s obviously Lewis’ style). I would love to see more colors. I live in Michigan and having all these beiges / grey tones, although beautiful and harmonious, would make me feel depressed in no time in winter (grey inside, grey outside? please no).
Amber, are you ready for the challenge of adding more colors (not necessarily in every room… and certainly not HGTV mag colors!)?

[Anna · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love a color palette that draws from sand, rocks, and trees, but despite the oodles of money injected into furnishings and finishes, the interiors in this book just struck me as soulless. I also had no patience for reading white text on a very light sage background that I skipped over prose and just glanced scornfully at dwellings out of reach for the hard working masses.

[Emily Vander Ark · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very beautiful book of images from homes with rooms worth more than my entire house. Lol.

[Nicole · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty but a little bland for me. 2 1/2 ⭐️

[Erin]

Sad and beige and grey.

[Celia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful design work! So inspiring. I will return to this book again and again. Amber Lewis is such a talent!

[Jordan Sosin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love a good interior design book.

[Meg · Rating 5 out of 5]

1 of my very favorite decorating books to find inspiration.

[Bonnie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I genuinely love design books, so I don’t want to get all annoyed about how designey they can be—but sometimes I really do want inspiration about how other people out there make their homes beautiful, without being shown an entire portfolio of white bouclé upholstered furniture that costs more than most people’s houses.

Also, my kid and I were looking through this book together and we spontaneously started playing a game called “Where’s the Toilet?” Seriously—dozens of photos of epic bathrooms, but there was not a SINGLE toilet to be found in any of the photos. NOT ONE. Oh there were steam showers, saunas, marble bathtubs, vintage rugs masquerading as bathmats, even a shower clad entirely in fluted marble, but no hint of a toilet. That, right there, is a good summary of Call It Home: Lewis does a lot of talking about how she designs real living spaces for real life, but apparently none of her clients need toilets, so.