Amazon.com description: Product Description: Usually the first room to greet guests, the living room is not only the most public area of any home, but also its most multifunctional. This essential room fills a variety of roles—from entertainment center to study area, children’s play zone to library, not to mention serving as the family’s gathering space, complete with couch and coffee table. Now Chris Casson Madden, nationally renowned design expert and author of Bedrooms, Getaways, and A Room of Her Own, imparts a wealth of decorating expertise in her new book, Chris Casson Madden’s New American Living Rooms. Showcasing a dazzling array of some of the most beautiful rooms across the country, Madden proves that living rooms can be at once practical, inviting, and inspiring.

Living rooms often present unique design challenges: they can range from great rooms with fifteen-foot-high
ceilings that stretch across half the house to small spaces that relate awkwardly to the rest of the home. In addition, the multifunctional character of these areas makes them all the more complex. Yet Madden highlights a myriad of design solutions that can make decorating this room painless, even pleasurable. She offers options and ideas to suit many tastes—whether you favor sleek, modern styling or old-world elegance, Asian-inspired elements or classical influences.

With homes from California to Connecticut, New Mexico to Maine, the book features nearly two dozen extraordinary living rooms. For large, open spaces, Madden offers creative ways to integrate all the activities of a living room, dining room, family room, library, bar, and study. She examines spaces that open onto gardens, pools, kitchens, or play areas and others that are centered around musical instruments, entertainment units, art, or books. She offers terrific ideas for handling storage and equipment problems and shows how the same room can be used for quiet time, family time, and entertaining.

Ultimately, Madden presents living rooms that are gorgeous, at times even luxurious, while remaining comfortable, nurturing, and appropriate for the families who use them—a difficult balance to strike, but it’s what makes Chris Casson Madden’s New American Living Rooms the essential guide to decorating these rooms for real life.