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Annie Elliott Design, Washington DC

Annie Elliott Design

Greater Washington DC

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So I wrote a book…

Annie Elliott | May 17, 2023

…and it is HERE, Gentle Readers!!! Available for sale on this very website. Right now!

Woman grinning holding small book
It’s here!

I think people usually write books this way: Usually, people think of an idea for a book, and then they write a book proposal, and then they find an agent, and then the agent gets them a publisher. I think that’s how it usually goes.

I…just wrote the book. I didn’t have a strategy or a plan; I just wanted to pull together some of the information I’d learned during my career as an interior designer-slash-decorator. I thought about the questions clients and friends have asked me most often, and then I answered them. As clearly and succinctly (and wittily) as I knew how.

Book cover, Annie Elliott's interior design handbook
The book itself — including the cover — was beautifully designed by Olivia Hammerman

At one point, I was trying to figure out whether I’d covered the issues people cared about the most. So I asked a handful of close friends what they considered their primary interior decorating challenges. The responses I received the most were choosing paint colors, understanding light bulbs, corralling clutter, and spouses in general.

Watercolor illustration of a coat tree, boots, and wallpaper
The book features the most CHARMING drawings by the brilliant Tania Lee. That’s her work on the cover, too ;)

Alas, about the last I could do precious little. But clutter! I hadn’t considered clutter to be an interior design issue, but of course it is! As a result: Chapter 9: Clutter. Coats, shoes, and bags…what to do? What to do? And, of course, there are chapters about paint colors, light bulbs, wallpaper, furniture arrangement, art, and other things.

The book is called, My Neighbor Saw Me Naked, and Other Reasons You Need Drapes. The most important things you need to know about decorating.

I hope you like it, Gentle Readers. And I hope the 78 friends and family members to whom you give the book like it, too.

Annie Elliott Design is based in Washington, D.C., and designing houses is still our favorite thing to do, literary digressions notwithstanding. We’re experts in creating gorgeous, color- and pattern-filled homes and telling people what to do in the nicest way possible.

Category: Window treatmentsTag: book, Clutter, My Neighbor Saw Me Naked, paint colors, shoe clutter, walllpaper, window treatments

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Happy Wallpaper Wednesday! Let’s talk about Cole & Son’s Acquario, shall we?Iconic Italian artist Piero Fornasetti designed Acquario for Cole & Son in the early 2010s. He was going through an ocean phase, captivated by its mysterious depths 🐠, so he developed this fish design and put it first on plates and fabrics, and then, luckily for us, on wallpaper. We just installed Acquario in the Print Room Blue colorway in a client’s tiny practice room (he plays classical guitar), and we LOVE it! That big old blowfish, just gliding along…he kills me.Featuring: @cole_and_son_wallpapers @fornasetti

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