3 Design Books To Add To The Top Of Your Reading Stack

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All-star designers Ashley Gilbreath, Bobby McAlpine and Carley Summers released these uplifting Southeast design books that are a tonic to the spirit.

Check out 3 Southeast design books to add to your reading stack

 

The Joy of Home design book featuring an entryway beneath a stairwell covered in floral-teal wallpaper

Room with circular dining table, a mix of slipcovered head chairs and side chairs

The Joy Of Home Celebrates The Everyday

Montgomery-based designer Ashley Gilbreath’s inaugural book, The Joy of Home, extends an invitation to celebrate the everyday. Out April 18 from Gibbs Smith, the tome reveals nine of the award winner’s proudest residential projects. Cultivating a sense of heritage and hospitality by mixing old with new, Gilbreath’s take on casual elegance is informed by sturdy textiles and stalwart antiques key to imparting spaces with history. Whether reviving the nostalgic palette of a childhood bedroom or incorporating objects that conjure a family’s fondest memories, Gilbreath demonstrates how to live comfortably and joyfully amid thoughtful details: be they fresh flowers or tables that expand to welcome unexpected guests for dinner.


cover of southeast design book with white staircase and brown statue

Southeast design book featuring dining area with ornate floor-to-ceiling windows and lion sculptures underneath

McAlpine: Romantic Modernism Showcases Exemplary Homes

April 4 heralded the arrival of Bobby McAlpine’s fourth tome, McAlpine: Romantic Modernism, from Rizzoli. The leading architect describes his new book as “a sharp left turn” from the work his firm is best known, pairing the unexpectedly kindred concepts of modernism and classicism while showcasing his most edited architectural solutions to date. The 11 exemplary homes span eight idyllic locales—half in the Southeast—all united by the certain “courage and conviction” most evident in the cover home: McAlpine’s own boundary-breaking Atlanta residence.


Sacred Spaces design book cover featuring a living room with a white fireplace, sofa and coffee table

Living room corner with green-velvet chaise underneath an interior window with white latticework

Sacred Spaces Shines The Spotlight On Carley Summers’ Photography

Although Carley Summers works chiefly as an interior designer, her debut title with Convergent Books—Sacred Spaces: Everyday People and the Beautiful Homes Created Out of Their Trials, Healing, and Victories, available April 18—shines the spotlight on her luminous photography instead. The Greenville, North Carolina, native combed the globe—from Guatemala and Morocco to France and England—for soulful, healing residences she presents in question-and-answer format with their owners. Summers says she hopes the 14 abodes contained within, including her own, which graces the cover, “will inspire others to create sacred spaces for themselves—no matter what trials they’ve walked through.”

SACRED SPACES PHOTOS: CARLEY SUMMERS. THE JOY OF HOME PHOTOS: EMILY FOLLOWILL. MCALPINE PHOTOS: SIMON UPTON