Beautify your home with the Collins accessible and essential guide to the world of interior decorating. Filled with helpful diagrams and illustrations in the successful Gem style, this is the only book you'll need to make your home look the way it should. Decorating at home is never easy, whether you're starting from scratch or improving an existing design. From colour schemes to plasterwork to tiling, the choice of products and the difficulty of application can be overwhelming. Now these tough problems are all solved by Collins Gem Decorating Tips, an accessible and trustworthy guide to beautifying your home. Gem Decorating Tips guides you through every phase of the decorating project, beginning with selecting the materials and colours most suitable for your specific situation, and moving on to assist you in all aspects of preparation and installation. Divided into four clear sections, Decorating Tips combines the Gem tradition of succinct and helpfully illustrated information with the Collins DIY tradition of accurate and lucid instruction. Chapter One deals with Planning: utilising colour and texture, organising space, and devising a scheme to make your home look its best. Chapter Two is on Preparation, the art of readying your home for its aesthetic upgrade, advising you on buying tools, priming wood, sanding floors, stripping paint, and more. Chapter Three moves on to painting and varnishing, clarifying the many finishing options and styles available to the discerning home decorator. And, finally, Chapter Four simplifies the essential task of covering your walls and floors, guiding you through wallpapering, panelling, tiling, carpeting, and more, insuring that your surfaces will be both beautiful and long-lasting. The information is written with the novice in mind, in clear and direct language and accompanied by helpful diagrams and charts. With Gem Decorating Tips, the intrepid novice decorator will now have the confidence and ability to make their home look the way they always imagined it.