For thirty-seven years and in nineteen previous books, Alexandra Stoddard has shared her keen eye for design and sure sense of style. Now this renowned decorator and lifestyle philosopher takes readers to a new level of visual awareness, showing how to achieve the discerning eye that is the key to creating beautiful environments for living. In Open Your Eyes, Alexandra Stoddard shows us how to see with the expertise and clarity of professional designers, creating a home that reflects our individual sense of beauty, refined to its best expression. She reveals how to use daily awareness to educate our eye, sharing examples from the masters and her own extensive training and personal experience. These visual epiphanies can happen anywhere, once we become attuned-perhaps as we set a pretty table, straighten a linen closer, stroll in a park or garden, or browse in a thrift shop. Through Stoddard's anecdotes and a rich array of ideas, tips, and techniques, we learn hundreds of ways to see and solve problems of proportion, pattern, color, and composition through simple, pleasing changes. These may be as subtle as rearranging treasured objects on a table, altering a lamp shade, or moving a chair-but they have dramatic results: a home that is more beautiful, more comfortable, and more useful, reflecting our unique sense of life. Each day becomes a visual feast as we deepen our understanding not only of what makes something beautiful but of what makes something beautiful to us. Filled with the warmth, encouragement, and down-to-earth solutions that have helped hundreds of thousands to seek and find their own personal style, Alexandra Stoddard's Open Your Eyes provides essential tools to elevate our understanding of what makes our house a home and transform our surroundings into personal works of art. For thirty-seven years and in nineteen previous books, Alexandra Stoddard has shared her keen eye for design and her sure sense of elegant style. Now this renowned decorator takes readers to a new level of visual awareness, showing how to achieve the discerning view that is the key to creating beautiful environments of professional quality.Open Your Eyes teaches, step by step, the principles of proportion, scale, order, symmetry, balance, space, form, composition, material, and more that provide the basis for true beauty. Stoddard shows how to use daily awareness to educate our eye, sharing examples from visual mentors and from her own training and experience. Each day becomes a visual feast as we hone our sensitivity to beauty and our understanding of what makes something beautiful.The author invites us to open our eyes and really see: How many colors are in a sunset? A glass of water? The soap bubbles in the sink? Why does one room look cramped and inharmonious, while another gives the impression of light and space? And how can we use this new vision to create a pleasing, comfortable personal world? In the process of learning to train our eye, Alexandra Stoddard enables us to become the artists of life. With this book in hand, we have all the essential tools to begin transforming our homes and our surroundings into personal works of art. Read Less