Jackson Free Press

In their new book, "The Comfortable Home: How to Invest in Your Nest and Live Well for Less" (Clarkson Potter, 2009, $35), co-authors Bob Williams and Mitchell Gold, business partners and owners of the home-furnishing company Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams, give easy-to-follow ideas on how to decorate or redecorate your home. They place a lot of focus on the planning that goes into creating functional, comfortable and budget-friendly rooms. According to Gold and Williams, before you can decorate a room appropriately you need to know the function of that room and how it is going to be used. Once you know that, decorating becomes much easier.

The authors go room-by-room and offer advice about choosing upholstery, lighting and the details that make a room sing. The color photos of homes throughout the book, offer visual inspiration to readers. It also contains great tips for new couples just starting out including re-prioritizing your budget, how to use color in a room and how to select quality furniture pieces.

How is "The Comfortable Home" different from your first design book, "Let's Get Comfortable" (Meredith Books, 2007, $34.95)?

This book has a little bit more practical how-to help. One of the things we wanted to do is to show a lot more floor plans of how to do a room. The first book was a little bit more general, and this book has a lot more emphasis on where and how to get started. It's funny: People go clothes shopping all the time, and they kind of know what their style is ... but for decorating a house, it's not something they do all the time. What we wanted to do was come up with some simple questions for people to ask themselves to sort of give them a basis of where to get started.

What was the most inspiring room the two of you have decorated and why?

One of my favorite rooms is in the apartment in New York. That's really because it's so different from any other room that we've done before. Basically, we have three walls of floor-to-ceiling glass. How do you decorate a room when the whole room is really about the view? One of the things that we really wanted to do was make sure all the furniture took advantage of the view. We set it up so that wherever you sat you really had a great view of Manhattan. One of the things we used as an influence for the room is the sky. We kept the room very light and the sectional a light sky-blue color so that your whole focus became the cityscape.

For new couples starting out, what is the best way to tackle combining their households?

That's kind of a tricky situation. You're mixing two different personalities and two different styles and sometimes two different emphases. Someone might have something that was handed down to him or her ... or it was the very first purchase that they made. There is sometimes a lot of emotional attachment to it, and it's important for the other person to understand what those attachments are and not just physically what the piece is or looks like or even the condition of it. It takes a little bit of being polite and understanding about it, and then as time goes on you can do a lot more editing and stuff. But to try to do that harsh editing from the very beginning might hurt the other person's feelings. You have to be an extreme diplomat about it. Or you may be lucky and the other person just doesn't give a damn—then you can do whatever you want.

What's the number-one piece of advice you would give a person decorating or redecorating?

I would encourage people, especially if you have multi-rooms, to think about how these rooms are going to be used. Is it going to be a room where I entertain friends and family and we're going to sit and have conversation? Or is this going to be a place where people sit back, and it's all about the television and things like that. If you start thinking about those things, it really helps you figure out what is the best kind of furniture you need for this space.

Anything else you'd like to share with our readers?

The home is probably your single largest investment you're going to have. Look at it as an investment that needs to pay dividends. And one way for it to pay dividends is for you to really enjoy it ... do the things that make a house a home.

Bob Williams and Mitchell Gold will have a book-signing party at SummerHouse (1109 Highland Colony Parkway, Ridgeland, 601-853-4445) Jan. 21, 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Read more Hitched at http://www.flyjfp.com.

Correction: In the print edition of this story, it states that Bob Williams and Mitchell Gold are life partners; which in fact they are no longer a couple anymore.