The Monocle Guide to Cosy Home

Sherleen Nio
May 10, 2016
2 min read

When I went browsing at the bookshop to find a good interior book to read, this book caught my attention. The cover is just a plain orange color with the title of the book printed in white yet it is so striking.

The Monocle Guide to Cosy Home is a book that feature living spaces around the world that fit in the category cosy home. It is also a bible to explain and show what cosiness actully is. The book contains many real life pictures of beautiful home and happy expression of its homeowners, breaking through from other interior or architectural prints which usually came up quite dull without the presence of living inside the photo.

According to the author, cosiness is not something that you can see inside a space, it is the feeling created by the ambience within. It is also a very relative thing, works differently with different individuals. Cosiness is not only found on the countryside home with big rug and warmer, or the big fluffy round sofa. Cosiness is something you can find in the urban area, high rise apartments and in edgy design also. Designer furniture or famous object does not necessarily counted as cosy. From what I've understand from the book, cosiness is the combination of the design and the atmosphere of the home and only can be achieve when the homeowner truly enjoy living inside the house. After all the case studies shown on the first part of the book, there are section which is full of tips and information of cosy home essentials. The tips are result of survey and observation from the author. It exposes anything we as a designer or even homeowners need to know about arangement and proportion including finding the perfect size of couch set, design requirements for specific age groups, garage style, home library design, and many more.

Matching with the cosy concept, this book surely is a convenient and easy to read book. The sequence of contents are clear and flow in a correct way to deliver the messages by showing case study of homes then the guidline on cosy home detail as this book targets to give reader knowledge on creating cosy home.

One thing I like about this book is the graphic. The text or image book is arranged professionaly with some helpful side notes for the reader and also great graphic representation on tips to arrange home spaces. Whether you are designers, students or cosy living seekers, this book is fun to read because it is a perfect balance between inspirational and practical about living better.