10 New Design Books to Read in 2022

January is slowly winding down and while the days are still lifeless and bleak, they give us plenty of time to spend indoors, dreaming and planning for the months ahead. It is also a perfect time to have a look at some awesome new design and gardening books that are going to be released in 2022. If you love decorating books and are always on the lookout for a great new addition to your shelves or coffee table, then you’ll be happy to see some promising titles on this list. I know I want them all! Here are some great design books in 2022. Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn a commission on all qualifying purchases.

Garden Maker: Growing a Life of Beauty and Wonder with Flowers / January 25, 2022

Much more than a how-to flower gardening book (though you will learn how to), Garden Maker is for those who want to grow beautiful things that reflect the glory and majesty of the Creator and bring a little bit of heaven down to earth.

From the beginning God made a garden, so it’s no surprise if you feel closer to Him with your hands in the dirt and the sun on your back. There is something profoundly soul-satisfying about creating and cultivating beauty. If you long to experience more splendor in your life, you can grow some of your very own.

Join kindred spirit Christie Purifoy as she helps you unearth the simple delights of growing garden flowers, from preparing and planning to creating beautiful bouquets and other arrangements. Lavishly photographed and lovingly written, this all-seasons guide invites you to discover the innumerable joys and wonders to be found in the flower garden.     

Anna Spiro: A Life in Pattern / February 1, 2022

A field guide to charming, colorful interiors from successful interior designer Anna Spiro.

Praised for her awe-inspiring ability to mix vibrant patterned fabrics, antique furniture, and collectible art, Anna Spiro has worked tirelessly throughout her design career to create compelling homes and spaces for her clients. This beautifully illustrated book, Anna Spiro: A Life in Pattern, is a source of inspiration for readers and admirers throughout the world of Spiro’s colorful and visually complex style.

Describing her singular design ethos, Spiro says, “I love to create rooms that spark emotion and people want to linger in. . . . spaces that are rooted in tradition, yet unique in their execution. It’s important for me to use only the highest quality so that our designs endure the test of time―quality over quantity. The end result is a curation of disparate objects brought together to create an interesting, layered, and inspiring space that de es the boundaries of dull yet respects the basic principles of classicism.”

From mood boards to finished rooms, this exploration of Spiro’s design philosophy gives readers the framework to create fiercely unique, surprising spaces that sing with individuality.

Susanna Salk: At Home with designers and Tastemakers / March 8, 2022

Susanna Salk shares with us the delightful and inspiring homes of top designers and tastemakers, revealing the personal and idiosyncratic interiors they create for themselves. Brimming with personality, these rooms are full of ideas and creativity, inspiring us to decorate in our own way by embracing our style and passions.

Through her work as the host of the “Quintessence At Home With” video series on YouTube, Susanna Salk visits incredible homes of designers and other creatives, experiencing how they live and how they decorate when it’s for themselves, not for a client. Whether it’s the Connecticut weekend retreat of textile designer John Robshaw, or photographer Pieter Estersohn’s restored Hudson Valley home full of his work and inspiration, or the cozy garden retreat of chef Lulu Powers in West Hollywood, Salk has gathered decorating tips and secrets from some of the most stylish and savvy people.

Here Salk opens the doors of her favorite homes, imparting lessons for navigating various design challenges, and limited budgets, while bringing their rooms to life. 

 With original photography that captures the big and small moments in all 15 homes—and with Salk’s tips on how to implement these design ideas into our own settings on our own budget—this book inspires us with ways we can live more fully and stylishly in our own homes.

Rose Tarlow: Three Houses  / March 22, 2022

An intimate visual archive of design inspiration from celebrated designer Rose Tarlow.

Inspired by memories of her East Coast childhood home, Windrift, lost in a fire more than 50 years ago, Rose Tarlow showcases three of her family houses in this deluxe slipcased volume. Often referred to as “the decorator’s decorator,” Tarlow has a distinctive style that has won her numerous international accolades, and her own houses are the embodiment of her design philosophy, exuding charming eccentricity and uncompromising quality. Featuring her family homes in Stone Canyon and Santa Barbara, California, and Provence, France, Three Houses presents Tarlow’s own personal archive—a treasure trove of precious memories and design inspiration for generations to come.

Chatsworth, Arcadia, Now: Seven Scenes from the Life of an English Country House / March 1, 2022

Chatsworth - Scenes from the life of an English country house

This stunning volume provides an enchanting visit to one of the most storied and beautiful English country houses.

No place embodies the spirit of the English country house better than Chatsworth. From best-selling books such as Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshireand Chatsworth: The House by Deborah Mitford, the late Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, American audiences have long been transfixed by this remarkable place and its extraordinary collection of art and decorative objects.

 Today, Chatsworth’s facade is newly cleaned and its windows freshly gilded. The forward-looking current Duke of Devonshire, who likes to say that “everything was new once,” has redone the public and private rooms. This tour-de-force volume is his telling of the story of Chatsworth through seven historical periods accompanied by stunning photo-graphic portraits of the house, its collections, and the grounds.

Chatsworth contains countless treasures from Nicolas Poussin’s Et in Arcadia Ego and Antonio Canova’s Endymion to seminal modern works by Lucian Freud and David Hockney. Though filled with works from different time periods, the collection represents the very best of the “new” from each artistic era.

What a Beautiful World! By Isabelle d’Ornano, March 22, 2022

An intimate look inside the boldly designed spaces of Isabelle d’Ornano’s life, from the personal to the professional

Isabelle d’Ornano, cofounder of the French skin care brand Sisley, has created places in her life as unique as they are exceptional. For the first time, Isabelle d’Ornano opens the doors to her personal, family, and professional spaces—from the heart of a Paris apartment to a country house and genuine paradise in nature—in this beautiful, richly illustrated book. This intimate journey goes to London and ends in Paris in the headquarters of Sisley, which she created with her husband, Hubert d’Ornano.

In each of these places, the magic encompassing the luxurious and the spectacular introduces us to the artists and personalities whose friendships bookmark the milestones of Isabelle d’Ornano’s life. Here, beauty reigns and lives through collages, paintings, watercolors, and sculptures, and even on cushions adorned with messages embroidered by Isabelle d’Ornano. Punctuated by Isabelle d’Ornano’s words and mantras, this book is a formidable source of inspiration for decoration enthusiasts and for those attracted to the contrasts, boldness, and talent of Isabelle d’Ornano’s life.

A Newport Summer by Ruthie Sommers 

An intimate love letter to summertime in Newport from photographer Nick Mele, the “modern-day Slim Aarons,” and interior designer Ruthie Sommers

Newport, Rhode Island, is one of the last bastions of American high society. The grand Gilded Age houses that top its oceanside cliffs and line storied Bellevue Avenue are largely untouched by contemporary renovation and taste, and family heirlooms are passed down from generation to generation with Yankee thrift. Indeed, Newport has an understated elegance that sets it apart from other resort towns. Life behind the facades of these elaborate mansions is rarely revealed, but now, photographer Nick Mele and author Ruthie Sommers, both Iifelong Newport residents, share their entrée into the parties, lawn tennis matches, beach clambakes, and family gatherings that make up the glorious days of a Newport summer. Picture the foggy mornings of June, the traditional yacht races of July, the annual meeting of old friends at Marble House in August, and the melancholy close of the season after Labor Day. Through Sommers’s personal, evocative text and Mele’s exquisite photographs of people, parties, beaches, and houses, the intimate charms of A Newport Summer come poignantly to life.

Entertaining in Style: Nancy Astor and Nancy Lancaster: Table Settings, Recipes, Flower Arrangements, and Decorating, February 15, 2022

This book showcases timeless recipes and inspirations for the perfect party from cousins Nancy Astor and celebrated interior designer Nancy Lancaster, both renowned in twentieth-century Britain for entertaining with style, sophistication, and joie de vivre.

Featuring original photography that highlights glam-orous menus, interior décor, table settings, and flower arrangements, this book is an homage to joyful entertaining in the English country house style. Nancy Astor and Nancy Lancaster, both born American, were renowned as two of Britain’s greatest party-givers, excelling at gracious entertaining, witty repartee, and above all sophisticated menus—talents rooted in their upbringing at Mirador, their Albemarle County, Virginia, family estate known for its superb food. 

 The recent discovery of the original Mirador recipe collection, together with materials from Astor’s and Lancaster’s archives, provides the basis for this book, a collaboration between descendants of both women. With 75 recipes, the book showcases menus that combine classic English dishes with Southern Amer-ican classics such as corn fritters, fried chicken, and Pullman salad.

Photographed at Cliveden, Nancy Astor’s country house, and Nancy Lancaster’s several homes, the book features the family’s original china, silver, and décor. Peppered throughout are previously unseen family photographs.

The English Country House, by James Peill, April 5, 2022

In this exquisitely illustrated book, James Peill offers a private tour of 10 magnificent and architecturally distinctive English country houses, all still in the hands of their original families, providing entertaining information about the families and insights into the houses’ architecture and interior décor

Stately, grand, and a testament to the generations who have cared for them, the 10 English country houses featured in this volume are a delicious treat for Anglophiles and fans of historic houses. Architecturally unique and filled with evocative family memorabilia, from commissioned portraits to monogrammed heirloom dinner services to the bells that once summoned the downstairs staff, these houses, like the fictional Downton Abbey, are all real homes and still in the hands of descendants of the original owners.

From Kentchurch Court, which has been the seat of the Scudamore family for nearly 1,000 years, to a delightful Gothic house in rural Cornwall to a charming ducal palace to Goodwood House, England’s greatest sporting estate, this beautifully illustrated book, now in a new, smaller format, showcases a wealth of gardens, interiors, and fine art collections. James Peill, coauthor of Vendome’s The Irish Country House and curator of Goodwood, recounts the ups and downs of the deep-rooted clans who constructed these homes and illuminates the history and legends behind these marvelous estates, many of which have never before been published. James Fennell’s evocative photographs bring the homes and their stunning grounds to life. Julian Fellowes, creator of Downton Abbey, contributes a foreword.

A Sicilian Dream: Villa Elena by Jacques Garcia, October 4, 2022

On the outskirts of the spectacular Baroque town of Noto, Sicily, Jacques Garcia has transformed an ancient monastery into an abode of earthly bliss.

Celebrated interior designer Jacques Garcia invites readers for the first time inside his private residence in Sicily. The former monastery, rebuilt in Noto’s characteristic golden limestone, boasts spectacular salons that have been restored with a profusion of noble materials and techniques: colored marbles, flamboyant stucco work, majolica tiles, damask silks, and velvets. Time stops in the elegant music room decorated with embroidered silks and rococo-style mirrors that reflect the decor to infinity; the gilded dining room is hung with silk damask wall coverings, an eighteenth-century Murano chandelier, and furnished with Chantilly porcelain and antique Italian rococo chairs. The grand marble salon features baroque paintings and a stunning collection of sculpture and Sicilian furniture.

The exquisite villa–surrounded by shaded terraces planted with towering cacti, succulents, and colorful birds of paradise–attests to Garcia’s love of ancient civilizations, and his masterful blending of Arab, Norman, Renaissance, and Baroque influences that converge in Sicily’s colorful history. The domain, dotted with ancient sculptures and reflecting pools, is graced with splendid panoramic views revealing the sea near Syracuse, a distant folly, a restored villa nestled in an ancient olive grove, and the decaying grandeur of a classical temple reconstructed with ancient fragments.

Hope you enjoyed this glimpse into the future of design books in 2022! To read about last year’s bestselling design books, make sure to check out the following Café Design story:

15 Design Books to Add to Your Library in 2021

Wishing you all a great weekend!

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2 Comments

  1. January 21, 2022 / 9:07 am

    Oooh such great titles! Thanks so much for sharing !

  2. Linda
    January 22, 2022 / 10:46 am

    Thanks so much for this round up of wonderful design books! I wish they were all available right now – I would do some impulse-buying!