On the Bookshelf: Style by Saladino

I almost feel guilty about recommending this book. I’m sending you out on a near impossible quest. The used copies online seem to be running in the $95 range. Just know I feel your pain, I’d like to get my hands on Saladino’s second book, which chronicles the design of his villa in Montecito (which Ellen DeGeneres and Portia De Rossi later purchased for $26 million). That book is running at around $250 - so I’ll see you at the Goodwill, flipping through the book section and hoping I strike gold.

Style by Saladino was published in 2000. At which point, John Saladino had already been working as a designer for nearly 30 years. He is known for effortlessly mixing old and new — in a way that is both architectural and classic (Did I mention he graduated from the Yale School of Art & Architecture?)

This is one of those design books that isn’t just eye candy. For example, when choosing color, Saladino writes “Relying on paint chips is unsatisfactory. Color multiplies in intensity when the square footage increases. Rather than settling immediately for the color that you think you want, my advice would be to select a color a few shades lighter; that way the color of the finished painted space will often have the effect that you thought you would get from the small sample.

(Note in the image to the right that a garden gate is hung on the wall like a modern painting.)

He does spend a fair bit of text explaining ways to make a large space feel more intimate (at the time of the book’s publication he was living in a huge New York City apartment — his living room had once been a ballroom) But the suggestions on how to create smaller rooms within rooms, how to light a space and of course, how to choose color — can apply to any size space.