The bridge between furniture companies, interior decorators and consumers.

Interior magazines are more than just collecting a bunch of information to bring it to a certain target audience: they give the opportunity to bring furniture companies, interior decorators/designers and the consumer together! No wonder they're well represented on major interior decoration fairs too! For the furniture companies, these magazines are the way of bringing their company and products under the attention, and interior decorators have the opportunity of grabbing their chance to put their creativity to practice. For the consumers, a magazine is an excellent way of getting more familiar with the interior world, so that they don't have to enter a furniture store without knowing what to say or what to ask for... By the numerous amount of interior examples in these magazines, it is possible to have inspiration for your own home. For interior decorators, the content of these magazines is priceless, because it doesn't only give the opportunity to make beautiful moodboards out of them, they're also kept up to date on the interior trends and what's for sale or what will be for sale on the area of interior decoration. Of course, reading such a magazine is an excellent source of inspiration for interior designs, interior examples, or for something graphical to create collages (of course for pesonal use only), so that an idea can be translated to something that can be visualized to others.

In all shapes and sizes.

The amount of interior magazines has been increasing exponentially, since interior design isn't only for the very rich people anymore, and since DIY (Do It Yourself) has become very popular too. Although the handymen are still popular (they're very busy and can quickly ask $50 an hour if not more), there are still many people who are careful on what they spend, and they have good reasons to do so, because why would you pay hundreds of dollars just to paint a few walls, while you can easily do it yourself?

Of course, interior magazines are about the interior of a home: carpets, wallpaper, couches, curtains, lighting and of course: living itself, because that's the reason why you're interested in interior magazines, right? Apart from these standard issues, they also talk about other things that have to do with interior and homes: finding mortgages, DIY (like which jobs are better to hire a professional for example), getting inspiration, ideas how to decorate your bathroom by some examples, and so on.

One-stop solution

Every interior magazine wants to come with a one-stop solution for all the problems you can find with interior. The more popular interior magazines don't only come with a magazine, but also cooperate with TV programs, DIY, furniture and decoration stores. One example is the magazine Better Homes & Gardens, where you can buy furniture of this brandname or even buy a house from their real estate branche!

Many interior magazines have already been published, and the fun thing is, that there actually are differences between these magazines.
There can be chosen to show a certain style, such as modern, classic or avant-garde, or from an audience point of view: people from certain regions for example, or people with an international orientation, such as the magazine Architectural Digest, which has the most beautiful interior (architecture) examples from all around the world! For the professional interior decorators and designers, or any other fans of interior design, there's the magazine Interior Design, which has the most compelling examples of cutting-edge contemporary interior design. If you're looking for something more accessible and homely, you can give Better Homes & Gardens a try. The accent of this magazine lies more to a cosy interior and lifestyle. For more classical interiors, you'd might want to have a look at the magazine House Beautiful, which talks about classic romanticistic, European interiors with a modern twist.

In the near future, I'll be putting more magazines that are available in the U.S. or online, so you can order them from behind your pc, so keep your eyes open the coming weeks!

Magazines in foreign countries.

There are many magazines in foreign countries that are also worthwhile to have a look at. Not only because it's just "something different", it's also interesting to see what moves other countries. Dutch design is something totally different compared to French design furniture for example. The former might be more minimalistic with a little twist of humour, whereas the latter is more about happy, cheerful but fashionable colors...
One great example of foreign magazines is Villas, a Belgian bilingual (Dutch and French) architectonic magazine that appears every six months with everything about (mainly) modern villas from an architectonic point of view. Lean design is one of the keypoints of this magazine, together with modern and spacious interior examples that dazzle the mind! In Belgium and the Netherlands, they cost 8,50 Euros per copy, which is a bit more than $10 (which is fairly reasonable in Europe). It might be a bit pricey to have it sent to the U.S. (one copy will be about $20), but it will be certainly worthwhile to see something that's different, out of the usual and European.

Should you ever be in the Czech Republic, I can really recommend you the magazine Rezidence. Usually costs about 59 Czech Crowns, which is a mere 3 dollars, and it covers a wide range of interior examples: modern, natural, Arabic, Baroque, trendy design, classical furniture and much more: all put into one magazine! The average Czech will probably be perplex of all the possibilities in this magazine, but for the interior decorator, this is the excellent source of inspiration. Also if you want to redo your house, it can give many ideas on what you can do! There website can be found at http://www.rezidence-mag.cz/ . In future, we're planning to write more about the Czech Republic and Prague, because it has a lot of facets which are very interesting on the area of architecture and interior design, including all the hints on how to get there and what are good places to stay there!