Yes, it does take courage to design a room, especially the ones in which we live. The prolific and much sought-after Melbourne-based interior designer Charlotte Coote eases our fears and shows us how to design our own spaces.

Being creative sometimes relies, in significant part, on where we live. The actual rooms in which we socialize and sleep, cook and entertain often determine our creative states of mind and our creative output.

The title alone says what most of us wish. Whether it’s a view of an ocean, a Great Lake, a pond or even a stream, something about living in a house close to the water that speaks to our collective aesthetic selves.

Architects Brett Woods and Joe Dangaran admit to a passion for midcentury Modern design—so much so that they are often commissioned to restore the best examples of the genre, including Craig Ellwood’s iconic 1965 house, known as the Moore House.

Although it’s often long in the making, a new name in interior design does seemingly vault to the top overnight—and stay there. An example of that would be Jean-Louis Deniot a French designer who lives in Paris, but whose designs are seen around the world.

The world’s best-known style maker, Jacques Grange, is regularly commissioned by the most illustrious tastemakers of our time to design their interiors.

The stylist and design expert Annette Joseph has never settled for the obvious. Years ago, she purchased a medieval house near the Liguria coastline in Tuscany and named her new residence La Fortezza (“The Fortress”).

The late Hugh Newell Jacobson once said, “The best house is polite to her neighbors and never shouts.” That directive was clearly passed on to his son, Simon, who now heads the namesake firm.

Stephen Sills begins every project with a mood board, each a work of art in itself. These documents, of sorts, relate the inspirations, the insights, the methods he seeks to employ for his clients’ homes.

Upon reading this book, it makes sense that designer Emma Sims-Hilditch began her work in film production for Ridley Scott. When she later founded her namesake firm in 2009, she took those visual cues and translated them into residential interiors.

It’s the flâneur, the wanderer, that is, who really sees Paris. Anyone visiting the capital can find their way to the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe, but it’s the casual observer of its urban life who finds the city’s other treasures.

Art is power. Such was it centuries ago and such is it, to some extent, today. When the Medici family ruled the city of Florence, art and artists became much-coveted commodities.