Don’t be scared of using black” is one tip in Patina Modern, a new book by Chris Mitchell and Pilar Guzmán that sets out nine principles for designing “warm, timeless interiors”. Their instructions are clear, attainable, and sometimes a little offbeat: “Take a bird’s-eye view of the room,” is another. The couple talk readers through their own taste, and the covetable interiors of their houses in Brooklyn and Long Island, though neither trained as interior designers, and they describe themselves as auto-didacts. Guzmán, an editor, has long worked with America’s chief lifestyle experts Martha Stewart and Oprah Winfrey, and Mitchell is also from a publishing background. (“Our first love is storytelling: magazines and content,” he says.) Their skill lies in mixing their refined lifestyle with chatty, upbeat, and forthright advice.

Do the couple ever break their own rules? “All the time,” says Mitchell. “But I would liken them to the rules of grammar. You can break ’em if you know ’em. And the thing that separates people who are a little at sea with interior design, and people who knowingly veer, is taste.”

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