COUNTRY LIVING DECORATIVE DETAILS: Essential Ingredients for Creating the Country Look - Tapa dura

How to bring a touch of country magic to your home with out having a complete room makeover Townie or country dweller, this book has fast, effective ways to use details to get the country look Identifies the key features that make up a home and shows how each can be transformed or adapted Country Living - Decorative Details shows how to add details to any home to achieve the characteristic country look, with inspirational pictures and practical advice. It seems almost a contradiction in terms to attempt to define the peculiar characteristics that come together to create 'country style'. In the first place, this look at its most successful is born of the individuality of the home owner, collector or maker and so is infinite in its variety. Secondly, there are really no strict rules to which adhere. But perhaps this is the key to the secret formula style, follow your own insticts, hang on to some solid tenets that embrace natural materials, harmony and quality, and perhaps add a few good contradictions too: organized clutter with Shaker simplicity, varied collections with one common thread, thirty shades of white and a lemon yellow dresser, the old with the new, and 'rus in urbe' or happily at home in the wild. The most soulless bedroom can be brought to life with an antique quilt, and the most clinical of fitted kitchens enhanced by a colour change and a collection of gleaming copper pans.

Jules MacMahon was a features editor of Country Living magazine for several years. She now works as a freelance writer.