Make Life Beautiful

Product Information

The long-awaited design book from Shea McGee, beautifully showcasing all that is possible for every room of your home. When designing a kitchen, we typically always start with the range and the hood as the focal wall, and then we build out from there. Tyler, with Killowen Construction, was awesome, and he drew our entire range wall to scale so I could see it and make changes before things got serious. Shea is a designer’s designer. Whether you are a professional designer or just a weekend aficionado looking for new ideas, this is the book for you. I can’t recommend it highly enough,” said Matt Baugher, SVP and Publisher of Harper Horizon. From the beginning, I always wanted putty-colored cabinetry, meaning a creamy, off-white color on the surround. But we have this 13-foot island, and I felt like if I was to do the same color on everything, it would fall a little flat.

There is a Style Guide chapter at the end of the book (as Shea mentioned before the book came out). This is where she delves into pros and cons of fabrics, rugs, countertop materials, kitchen styling, etc. Again, succinctly but I think it’s useful nonetheless.Want to live the best version of your life? Read this book to follow Syd and Shea’s lead and learn how to Make Life Beautiful. In 2020, Shea and her husband Syd McGee released Make Life Beautiful, their New York Times bestselling autobiography which offered fans an insider and intimate look into how they built their business. Both long-time and new fans will not only gain insight into how the McGees built such a successful company but also be inspired to apply design principles to their lives. Inspirational topics to help readers build an authentic life include The book switches every paragraph between Shea and her husband Syd's perspective. Personally, this made it very choppy and repetitive for me and would have loved if the book was all in one person's perspective. Even switching from chapter to chapter would have flowed a lot better.

The Art of Home is as functional as it is heart-stoppingly beautiful, and it will maintain a presence in your home for years to come. In a video shared on Studio McGee’s social media, Shea gave the first look at the upcoming new book . When it came to the cabinetry design, I wanted a shaker detail, and then we added this little cove bead along with the profile of the cabinetry. We worked with Killowen on the build of our home, and they also do cabinetry, so he helped bring that custom detail to life. What I wish is that they would have included pictures, just like many memoirs do. She mentions a lot of specific projects, and I would have appreciated seeing the pictures there instead of a lengthy description (that I kind of skipped), which resulted in me having to Google the projects. It would have been nice to see pictures of their first home, the nursery, their rental in SLC, etc.I'm not sure what the point of the book was- it didn't really provide design tips and while I think their goal was to inspire people on how they started their business it didn't feel like they provided real information on that to actually give people tips on how to do that either. The tone often felt like they were bragging about themselves which annoyed me.

In The Art of Home , Shea takes us through every room of the house, starting with an explanation of process and then guiding our entryways, living rooms, kitchens, offices, kids' rooms, and even our utility rooms. With step-by-step guides paired with her own design projects and the power of her personal stories, Shea helps us transform the most important parts of our lives and how we live. I really wanted a big farmhouse sink in our kitchen, so we did the White Haven from Kohler. I love a drip-edge detail; this is something that we’ll do in wood often underneath a farmhouse sink. It catches any spillage that happens when you’re doing dishes and protects your cabinetry. I wanted to do this differently, so I actually did a marble drip-edge across the bottom, and I love how this turned out. For the one million-plus followers who turn to Syd and Shea McGee for advice on building a beautiful home and life, Make Life Beautiful is a behind-the-scenes look into how the couple transformed Shea’s small room of fabric samples and big dream of becoming a designer into one of the most successful and fastest-growing interior design businesses in the country. The long-awaited design book from the New York Times bestselling author showcases the beautiful spaces behind Studio McGee and the tools needed for crafting them on your own.Whether it’s through her thriving design business, Studio McGee, or her online community of over five million followers, Shea has shown the world how the principles of high-end design can be applied to any home on any budget. In her first-ever design book,Shea takes us through every room of the house, starting with an explanation of process and then guiding the way to a cohesive design for our entryways, living rooms, kitchens, offices, kids’ rooms, and even our utility rooms, balancing her signature aesthetic of sophisticated design and livable functionality. Scroll through for some inspiration from some of our favorite reading nooks we’ve designed and styled over the years. Plus, at the bottom, a step-by-step guide to creating your own cozy reading nook at home. Some of the info about their life was interesting and new to me but a majority of the book was things you already learned and knew about them if you watched their show on Netflix. Art and design coffee table books are some of our favorite sources of inspiration. Plus, they make great conversation starters and decor accents to bring dimension, personality, or even height to a vignette. Our mission to Make Life Beautiful has taken on various meanings since we started this journey,” Shea notes, “but our goal from the beginning has been to inspire people to make their homes a more beautiful place, and it remains the same. We want to continue to inspire people to create beauty around them and believe that good design has the power to draw us in and spend more time with the people we love. It all starts with love at home.”

I love that the shape has this bridge details, but then it has this square arch here that makes it still feel modern. The photos are sooo detailed that you can almost feel like you’re physically in the room looking at things. They really paid attention to the quality of the images. Last year saw the publication of StudioMcGee’s New York Times NYT best-selling book,“Make Life Beautiful,”and the premiere and subsequent second season of the Netflix original series,“Dream Home Makeover,”as well as the brand’s first licensing partnership withTarget for Threshold.and finding imagery that speaks to you and how you want your space to feel is a crucial part of the process, whether you’re designing one room or an entire home. Join Shea as she teaches us to dream and then shows us how to make it reality. Her new book, The Art of Home, is as functional as it is heart-stoppingly beautiful and it will maintain a presence in your home for years to come.