Doing it by design

Shopfront: Most people buy coffee table books on interior design to get ideas from the photographs - who actually reads any of them?

But one worth having a closer look at is Interiors by Design by Ros Byam Shaw (Ryland, Peters & Small, £25).

It's not in depth by any means, but it does give just enough information about things like creating a brief when employing an interior designer or how to make each room work best.

One gripe would be the misleading trade secrets section that is full of incredibly obvious things such as "large rooms need more light sources than smaller ones" or "pale colours make a room seem bigger". Duh.