With our Book Club series, we hand over the proverbial mic to our Experts—letting them share their work, thought process, and best tips, all in their own words. The following is an excerpt from Andrew Howard’s new book, Comforts of Home, published this month with Abrams.

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I don’t think I’d ever fully appreciated living in a completely furnished—and finished—house.

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That’s until my family and I spent close to a year in our not-quite-completed new place with not much more than a sectional sofa, four barstools, and a few mattresses on the floor. This hadn’t been our original plan at all, no way, no how. At the last minute, the family that bought our former home decided they wanted all our furniture, too. Not a bad compliment, right? The problem was, it left us starting from square one when it came to filling the new house.

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You’d think I’d be able to get furnishings fast, but when you’re an interior designer, meeting clients’ needs always comes first—I swear!—and that, plus some very, very, very long supply chain delays, meant Katie, the boys, and I were essentially camping out in our home for twelve very, very, very long months.

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“The biggest sign of a home’s success is when people want to come over. When I drive by a house I’ve designed for folks and I see a pile of bikes and a bunch of cars in the driveway, I know I’ve done my job right.”

—Andrew Howard

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But you know what? I wouldn’t trade that time for anything (though I’m also pretty sure I wouldn’t do it again, or recommend anyone else try it). First off, it was, weirdly, kind of fun, and second, it taught us so much about how we would use the house, which we built from scratch with residential designer Kevin Gray. We learned which rooms we gravitated toward more than others, which spaces got the best light at certain times of day. And all that helped me make a whole bunch of design decisions. Take my office as an example, or the room I thought I’d claim as my office. During those long no-furniture days, I realized I wasn’t going to need a space that big to work from—especially since I liked going into my actual office—and that its coziness, relatively small windows, and closeness to the bedrooms would make it a great media room.

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Our previous homes had also taught us a lot about what we needed in this new one, especially in terms of space planning—all things I think any young family can benefit from. We knew we wanted a larger kitchen (duh) and dining areas, too, plus an extra chill-out room for the kids. We also hoped to have an adults-only area other than our bedroom and the living room—one that was a bit removed from the rest of the house. Lastly, we wanted an uber-comfortable group lounging zone, in addition to the family room, for watching TV—which is the media room that my office became.

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A lot of these must-have spaces are now my favorite rooms in the house. But before we get to them, I’m sure you’re wondering about the big picture of how we wanted our home to look and feel. So here goes.

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Mostly, we were led by how we wanted it to feel because, believe it or not, I didn’t know exactly how I wanted it to look. (Is that a dangerous thing for an interior designer to admit about his own house? If so, stop reading right now, and just go look at all the pretty pictures.)

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I designed the house one room at a time, without an overarching aesthetic vision other than wanting it all to be colorful and memorable. For the most part, I started each space with what I thought was a cool idea or lead fabric—many I’d originally had for clients but hadn’t used because they weren’t a fit. I’d saved all my favorites, and I broke out a ton of them to use here. A breakfast nook wrapped in an oversized gingham? Check. A wildly colorful botanical print for both the walls and the curtains in the living room? Double check. Custom mural wallpapers in five different rooms? Quintuple check.

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As for that former office turned media room, it takes inspiration from Elvis’s famous plant-covered Jungle Room at Graceland. I’ll admit that particular inspo wasn’t something I’d ever pitched to a client, but the kids heard about the King’s space and thought it would be great to have something similar somewhere in the house. I didn’t want our family home to be filled only with my (great, super-awesome) ideas, and the little people had spoken. Now, we have a palm-print-wrapped Jungle Room, and we all love it. Twelve people can fit on the sectional in there, easy.

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OK, but back to how we wanted the house to feel: The main thing was just totally relaxed. As I’ve said before, to me, the number one way to make a house like this comfortable is to be sure it’s indestructible. And this one absolutely is: all indoor-outdoor fabrics and carpets, washable painted surfaces, flooring, and wall coverings made of vinyl that look like wood or paper. When the adults in a house aren’t worried about things getting destroyed, everyone gets to be entirely, completely, at ease.

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Whatever the style, I think the biggest sign of a home’s success is when people want to come over. Like, when I drive by a house I’ve designed for folks and I see a pile of bikes and a bunch of cars in the driveway, I know I’ve done my job right. And, yeah, I know a lot of that is about the people who live there. But it’s also about how a house makes the people in it feel: comfortable, and maybe even like their truest and best selves. When that’s the case, people just want to be there, and that’s definitely what has happened with our place. Our kids’ friends suggest we host the next sleepover, and neighbors stop by unannounced, somehow ending up in our kitchen. I guess it could just be my cooking, or my what’s-not-to-love personality? Nah, it’s definitely the house.

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Order Andrew’s new book for more inspiration, or book a consultation with him to get personalized advice for your space.

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