California Beach House Luxury

This arresting coffee-table book from Jane (Baxter, a picture book), host of HGTV’s Dream Home, delves into how she designed the sumptuous interiors of her Venice Beach mansion. Recounting her path to becoming an interior designer, Jane discusses how she used savings from her childhood modeling gigs to start her own clothing brand, which opened doors for her to later establish her own design firm. She explains how she decorated each room of her house, starting in the kitchen, where she forswore upper cabinetry to encourage herself to rely on fresh produce over shelf-stable pantry items. “Stone has the power to create an instant vision of elegance,” she contends, showing how she framed the living room fireplace with a wall of marbled stone. “Moorish motifs” feature throughout the home, including the intricately patterned brass Moroccan doors leading to the primary bedroom and the Moroccan lattice-style headboard in the guest bedroom. Though Jane offers a few pointers in the introduction, such as entreating readers to hire an architect and structural engineer when remodeling and cautioning that it might take years to find the right “forever home,” the many luxuries in Jane’s house (her sons’ playroom features netting suspended from the ceiling, accessed via a rock-climbing wall, where the kids can hang out) make the volume more aspirational than practical. The result is a sparkling study in opulent design. * Publishers Weekly *