These are some bohemian, eclectic, or otherwise inspiring style and home decor books I’m currently reading. Yes, I have lots of books going on at once. I have a deck of vintage playing cards on our coffee table that I use as bookmarks – 52 bookmarks seems to be enough for all my simultaneous reading!

Bazaar Style by Selina Lake

I love looking through the photos in this book – great decorating ideas that get your super colorful, creative juices going! And the book actually has useful tips on almost every page for little things, like how to use lighting in the most atmospheric way: use smaller lamps here and there instead of one big light on the ceiling, and there are picture examples… Very pretty and useful book, I was pleasantly surprised because I didn’t know what to expect. I thought at first that maybe it’s some generic home decor series book, but it’s more in-depth and interesting than I expected.

Because of my vintage obsession and BOHOpage shop, I have A LOT of dresses. Like, 80. Ok that’s a modest estimate. Let’s just say, A LOT. I’ve fantasized about hanging the most exciting ones on walls, but my fiance doesn’t share the same enthusiasm for clutter-, I mean clothes-decor. So I’m content with just dressing up a mannequin I have, and switching her outfit time to time. That’s actually a really cool home decor tip too: get a mannequin and have fun dressing it up, it gives a lot of character to the room!

Life Less Ordinary
by Zoe Ellison & Alex Legendre

Such a gorgeous book my love gave me for Christmas! Beautiful pages, and small postcards hidden in cute little envelopes inside… French vintage, shabby chic, natural, and rustic style photos of the authors’ homes and their special antique finds. The authors have a store called i gigi general store in Brighton, England. If you’re near there, it seems like a lovely place to visit!

Life Less Ordinary has 190 pages of just amazingly gorgeous, raw, simple home decor. I’ve noticed recently that my style has started to slightly shift from being all out colorful, and mixing and matching everything, to a more simple direction. Or simple is not the right word – more like, calm and earthier toned – I now gravitate towards white, grey and light beige. But still in a mixture of textures and objects from different cultures and decades combined together. Much like everything in this book!

GYPSET STYLE & GYPSET TRAVEL
BY JULIA CHAPLIN

I’m running out of positive adjectives describing all these books… But these two are… ENTIRELY SPLENDID! The Travel one features somewhat secret locations around the world where gypsy free spirits gather, vacation or live, and the Style one is a good education on the roots and development of bohemian clothing style. The author Julia Chaplin shares interesting stories and information about the topics, people, and places, to the point where reading the Travel one especially, I feel like I need to be ordering some serious plane tickets.

FINNISH LIVING ROOMS
BY GLORIAN KOTI MAGAZINE

I found this Suomalaiset Olohuoneet – Finnish Living Rooms book, published by Glorian Koti magazine, in a thrift store in Finland. The Scandinavian style is quite subdued and minimalistic in nature, but this books showcases actual Finnish people’s living rooms from a variety of styles. Even if your style is super elaborate, eclectic, and mixy-matchy, seeing more simple approaches is refreshing. Granted, there are styles I just can’t handle, such as preppy or glam, but even those have some elements that can give cool decorating ideas. This is my favorite page in this book, again, using clothing as wall decor:

FASHIONABLE SELBY
BY TODD SELBY

What a cool book! Fashionable Selby includes amazing photography from creative people around the world. The common thread is that all of the featured personalities are passionate about style in some way or other, whether it’s clothing design, jewelry making, or fabric dyeing. You get to see how they dress, what their homes look like, and even what their handwriting looks like, as their handwritten interviews are included in the book.

The photo that sold me on the book and made me buy it as I browsed through it in Anthropologie recently, was this bohemian heaven downstairs view of Virginia Bates’ shop, Virginia Antiques, in London:

Other people featured in the book are Dries Van Noten, Isabel Marant and Lou Doillon, to mention a few.

If you’re interested in any of these books, just google for them. I’m not affiliated with any of them, just more or less infatuated by them! :)