Choosing Colours

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Erudite but also incredibly accessible - Rated
Warning: this book can become addictive. I've just been renovating a whole house and I spent so much time with my head in this book, friends started to tease me. It's beautiful, but it's also thoughtful and brilliantly creative. I can't believe some reviewers on here don't find it useful. McCloud covers so much, from every shade of each colour to period colours (like the 1930s palettes I ended up using) to colours for beach homes or cold climates or loft style apartments. In short, there is a wealth of knowledge in this book and it's written with the passion one has come to expect from McCloud. To those who find this book hard to use, what do you want Kevin to do, come round your house and choose the colours for you? Be creative, pick what you like and experiment. That's the whole idea of the book! I did and I've ended up using colour in a way that I never thought possible.

Recomended - Rated
Well put together. An interesting read as well as a useful reference in helping with colour choice.

Very pretty.. and pretty useless - Rated
This book is a very pretty book. It has lots of nice colours and pictures. But it is very hard to use & I don't feel I've learned much about how to use colour!
And while the colours are very nice, perhaps one reason I still can't work out what colours go with what, is that there aren't many colours in here that I would actually use in my home. The style is very classic / seaside cottage and I'm more of an urban trendy sort of gal.

Too cool - Rated
Great if you have a house like some of the exotic examples in this book. Not so good if you don't. A little bit too cool for its own good I did not find this to be very user friendly. It is very hard to relate any of the examples to real world rooms - they are just all like show homes. It might suit some though, perhaps semi-pro interior designers.

Best colour book ever for interior design! - Rated
This is a superb book.

I am an amateur who's tried to use colour in my home but with disappointing results. I love colour and, over the years, I've looked at many books on interior design and on colour. There are a few good books for painters and graphic designers (Itten's Elements of Color, Color Star and Art of Color) but I've never before seen such a sophisticated but at the same time (elegantly) simple book that goes well beyond the basic colour charts and in a very usable way. I can't wait to try one of the suggested combinations.

I wish Kevin McCloud (whom I've watched in many Grand Designs programmes since we've always wanted to have our own home built but a) can't face the torture involved and b) can't find the land near London) would do something at a similar level of quality for lighting (his 1995 book is out of print).

Kevin - if you read this, please think about it seriously! Or at least get a publisher to re-publish your 1995 edition...