The Best Interior Design Books for 2026: 37 Guides, Textbooks, Classics and New Releases

The best interior design books in 2026 depend on what you need them for. For beginners, start with Frida Ramstedt's The Interior Design Handbook and Emily Henderson's The New Design Rules; for students, Interior Design Illustrated by Francis D. K. Ching and Corky Binggeli and Human Dimension and Interior Space by Julius Panero and Martin Zelnik; for the coffee table, Architectural Digest at 100 and AD at Home; and among the new releases of September 2026, Bunny Williams and Elizabeth Lawrence: Decoration.

This guide sorts 37 books by use: beginner guides, textbooks and references, classics, coffee table books and the new releases of 2026 and 2025. Each entry gives the author, the publisher and the date of the edition to buy as of October 2026, checked on the publisher's page or, where that page could not be read, in a library catalogue.

Best Interior Design Books at a Glance

Best Interior Design Books for Beginners

Start here if you are decorating your own home or teaching yourself the basics. These four books explain the rules behind a room that works (proportion, scale, light, layout) instead of only showing finished rooms, which makes them the best interior decorating books for a first read.

1. The Interior Design Handbook by Frida Ramstedt

Publisher: Clarkson Potter, October 2020 · 240 pages · illustrated by Mia Olofsson · ISBN 9780593139318

Ramstedt, the founder of Trendenser, one of Sweden's largest interior design blogs, explains why a room looks right rather than what to buy. Her publisher lists the rules of thumb it teaches: the golden ratio, the right size of coffee table for a sofa, the height at which to hang a light and how to use a mood board, all with illustrations. A good first book if you want rules you can apply the same day.

2. The New Design Rules by Emily Henderson and Jessica Cumberbatch Anderson

Publisher: Clarkson Potter, May 2022 · 336 pages · ISBN 9781984826480

Subtitled How to Decorate and Renovate, from Start to Finish, it follows Henderson's own process decision by decision: picking paint, arranging furniture, hanging window treatments and choosing light fixtures, plus when to hire a contractor, an architect or a handyperson. Best for a homeowner planning a refresh or a full renovation.

3. Interior Design Master Class: 100 Rooms by Carl Dellatore

Publisher: Rizzoli, September 2025 · 320 pages · ISBN 9780847874453

A companion to Dellatore's Interior Design Master Class: 100 designers each explain one of their rooms and why it works. The rooms are grouped by type (family and media rooms, entryways and porches, bedrooms and sitting rooms, dining rooms and bars, kitchens, baths and mudrooms), so you can go straight to the room you are working on.

4. Home, Improved by Fariha Nasir

Publisher: Abrams, September 2026 · 256 pages · ISBN 9781419782480

New in 2026. Nasir, the designer behind the Instagram account @pennies_for_a_fortune, writes for DIY beginners: easy renovation ideas and room makeovers for every budget, how to choose materials and how to carry out simple furniture and accessory projects yourself.

Best Interior Design Textbooks for Students and Professionals

These four books cover the technical side of interior design: drawing and design principles, human dimensions, specifications and building codes. Buy the latest edition, because reference books are updated as codes and practice change.

5. Interior Design Illustrated by Francis D. K. Ching and Corky Binggeli

Publisher: Wiley, 4th edition, February 2018 · ISBN 9781119377207 (paperback)

Ching's illustrated textbook takes students from defining a space and the elements of design to building systems and sustainable materials. The fourth edition was updated for current building codes and practice, with new or revised material on acoustics, LED lighting, workplace design, color and modeling software, BIM included. If you draw rooms the way Ching teaches, ArchiVinci's AI render generator turns a line drawing into a finished image that follows it, in seconds: see the example in From Book to Room.

6. Human Dimension and Interior Space by Julius Panero and Martin Zelnik

Publisher: Watson-Guptill, November 1979 · 320 pages · ISBN 9780823072712

Its publisher calls it the first major reference book of design standards based on anthropometrics, the measurement of the human body: how much room people need to sit, work, pass and reach in an interior. Written for everyone who plans and details interiors, from designers and architects to furniture designers and students, it is the book to check clearances against when you lay out a room; our guide to space planning shows the process.

7. The Interior Design Reference & Specification Book by Chris Grimley and Mimi Love

Publisher: Rockport (Quarto), updated and revised edition, January 2018 · 288 pages · ISBN 9781631593802 · first published in 2013

A compact sourcebook (5.75 × 8.25 in) of charts, specifications and diagrams for a whole project: the stages of an interior project and its schedule, how rooms are composed as spaces, surfaces (color, materials, texture and pattern), lighting, sound and smell, furniture and fixtures, and resources such as sustainability guidelines. The revised edition adds interviews with practitioners. It is the one to keep on the desk.

8. The Codes Guidebook for Interiors by Katherine E. Kennon and Sharon K. Harmon

Publisher: Wiley, 8th edition, January 2022 · 624 pages · ISBN 9781119720959

The code reference for commercial interior design, and for residential projects too: it explains the US codes and standards (ICC, NFPA, ANSI and the ADA) as of the 2018 and 2021 ICC codes, including the International Building Code and the Life Safety Code, with accessibility, fire protection and plumbing and mechanical requirements. Outside the US, read it to understand how codes shape a design, then check your local rules.

Best Interior Design Books of All Time: The Classics

Five classics of interior architecture and decoration, from 1897 to 2012, that explain why rooms work: proportion, recurring patterns, period detail and sustainability. The two oldest are free to read on Project Gutenberg.

9. The Decoration of Houses by Edith Wharton and Ogden Codman Jr.

Publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1897 · public domain in the US, free on Project Gutenberg

Wharton and Codman rejected Victorian excess, with its heavy curtains and cluttered rooms, and argued for classical order, proportion and symmetry, treating decoration as a branch of architecture rather than of fashion. Reading it trains your eye to see a room's structure first and its ornament second. For the styles on either side of the argument, see our guides to Victorian architecture and neoclassical architecture.

10. The House in Good Taste by Elsie de Wolfe

First published: 1913 · public domain in the US, free on Project Gutenberg

De Wolfe (1865–1950), a pioneering decorator, argues that a home should express the people who live in it and follow three principles: simplicity, suitability and proportion. She also worked on the interiors of Henry Clay Frick's mansion in New York, the subject of entry 32.

11. A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction by Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa and Murray Silverstein

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1977 · more than 1,100 pages · with Max Jacobson, Ingrid Fiksdahl-King and Shlomo Angel · ISBN 9780195019193

Instead of styles, it describes design problems that come up again and again, from towns and buildings down to single rooms, each with a solution written as a "pattern"; the patterns link to one another like the words of a language. For interior designers, the room-scale patterns are a way to think about how a space supports daily life, not only how it looks.

12. Elements of Style: An Encyclopedia of Domestic Architectural Detail, edited by Stephen Calloway

Publisher: Firefly Books, 2012 · 592 pages · with Elizabeth Cromley and Alan Powers · ISBN 9781770850866 · first published in 1991

An illustrated encyclopedia of the architectural details of houses through the centuries, such as columns, moldings, fireplaces and staircases. For anyone restoring an old house or designing a historically informed interior, it is a lesson in the grammar of ornament. Not to be confused with Erin Gates's Elements of Style (2014), a different book.

13. The Shape of Green: Aesthetics, Ecology, and Design by Lance Hosey

Publisher: Island Press, 2012 · 200 pages · ISBN 9781610910323

Hosey examines the relationship between sustainability and beauty and argues that green design has to be beautiful as well as responsible. Useful when you need to make the case for sustainable choices to a client; for the nature-inspired side of green interiors, see our guide to biophilic design.

Interior designers also read architecture theory: The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard, The Eyes of the Skin by Juhani Pallasmaa, The Architecture of Happiness by Alain de Botton, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture by Robert Venturi and Delirious New York by Rem Koolhaas are in our list of the best architecture books.

Best Interior Design Coffee Table Books

Coffee table books are large, photograph-led volumes made to be browsed: they teach by example, room after room. The eight below are interior design titles from Abrams, Phaidon, Rizzoli and Clarkson Potter, from a century of Architectural Digest to designers' own guides to layering a room.

14. Architectural Digest at 100: A Century of Style

Publisher: Abrams, October 2019 · 464 pages · introduction by Amy Astley, foreword by Anna Wintour · ISBN 9781419733338

A visual history of the magazine's first hundred years, drawn from its archives: the homes of figures such as Barack and Michelle Obama, David Bowie, Truman Capote and Diana Vreeland, and the work of designers and architects from Elsie de Wolfe and David Hicks to India Mahdavi, Peter Marino, Frank Gehry and Frank Lloyd Wright. If you follow AD and other architecture magazines, this is the archive in one volume.

15. Interiors: The Greatest Rooms of the Century, by the Phaidon Editors

Publisher: Phaidon, May 2019 · 448 pages · ISBN 9780714878218

Phaidon's editors gathered what the title calls the greatest rooms of the century in one large volume, so it is a survey of many designers rather than a monograph on one. Pick it if you want range on the table.

16. Ralph Lauren: A Way of Living: Home, Design, Inspiration

Publisher: Rizzoli, September 2023 · 544 pages · ISBN 9780847872145

Published for the 40th anniversary of the Ralph Lauren home collection, it is the first comprehensive book on the designer's approach to the home, his own homes included. It is the Ralph Lauren coffee table book people search for and, at 544 pages, one of the biggest on this list.

17. Defining Style: The Book of Interior Design by Joan Barzilay Freund with Asad Syrkett

Publisher: Phaidon, 2025 · 296 pages · ISBN 9781838667818

Phaidon's 2025 book on interior design styles, written by Joan Barzilay Freund with Asad Syrkett. With its cover of radiating color bands it works as a table book as well as a reference on styles.

18. AD at Home: Architectural Digest, edited by Amy Astley

Publisher: Rizzoli, September 2025 · 496 pages · foreword by Anna Wintour · ISBN 9780847875733

Astley, AD's editor in chief, chose her favorite stories from the magazine's last ten years: the homes of people from fashion, music, film, art and design, from Dakota Johnson's mid-century modern house in Los Angeles to classic townhouses and country estates, with photographs not published before. At 10 × 13 inches, it needs a big table.

19. Beata Heuman: Every Room Should Sing

Publisher: Rizzoli, March 2021 · 240 pages · ISBN 9780847869848

The debut book of the Swedish-born, London-based designer is organized by design principle rather than by project: each chapter offers a way to think about decorating a home, finding your own voice and making ordinary details extraordinary. Bright color, bold pattern and her own drawings make it a picture book and a lesson at once.

20. Live Beautiful by Athena Calderone

Publisher: Abrams, March 2020 · 256 pages · ISBN 9781419742804

Calderone, the designer behind EyeSwoon, visits the homes of decorators, fashion designers and tastemakers, and two of her own, and breaks each room down into its parts: layered textures and patterns, collected pieces and vignettes, with tips to bring them into your own space. Her publisher calls it much more than a coffee table book, and the tips are the reason.

21. Made for Living: Collected Interiors for All Sorts of Styles by Amber Lewis with Cat Chen

Publisher: Clarkson Potter, October 2020 · 288 pages · ISBN 9781984823915

Lewis's book is about layering: how pillows, objects, patterns and lighting are mixed so that a room feels finished but not new, shown in more than 250 photographs of her interiors. A good pick if you like a relaxed, collected Californian look.

New Interior Design Books of 2026

The newest books on this list, published between May and September 2026 (a sixth, Home, Improved, is in the beginners' section). These five were chosen from this year's releases for what a reader can take from them, from layering a room to lighting it.

22. Bunny Williams and Elizabeth Lawrence: Decoration

Publisher: Rizzoli, September 2026 · 406 pages · ISBN 9780847877058

The two designers set out the principles behind their rooms: how to layer pattern and texture, get the scale right, mix old and new and balance formality with comfort, with lessons from their work with clients, architects and artisans. Rizzoli describes their approach as "a philosophy of refinement over replacement": valuing what endures and reworking what already exists.

23. Light: Illuminated Interiors and Architecture by Nathan Orsman with Ian Volner

Publisher: Rizzoli, September 2026 · 320 pages · ISBN 9780847877416

The lighting designer shows how light shapes interiors, architecture and gardens, in projects with designers such as Ashe Leandro, Gil Schafer, Steven Gambrel and Kelly Behun, from city penthouses to beachfront houses. Rizzoli presents it as a visual primer for design lovers and professionals alike. To compare light on a photo of your own room, ArchiVinci's Interior module has six lighting buttons, from Daylight to Studio light.

24. Feel Free Home: The Art of Freethinking Design by Leanne Ford

Publisher: Abrams, May 2026 · 224 pages · ISBN 9781419771088

The designer and HGTV personality turns decades of renovating, restoring and decorating houses into a practical guide: keep and reuse what you can, paint gives anything new life, less is more and undone can be beautiful. Down-to-earth decorating ideas and how-to recipes in every chapter make it a 2026 pick for beginners too.

25. Inside the Country Houses of Britain & Ireland by Alec Cobbe

Publisher: Rizzoli, September 2026 · 256 pages · foreword by Julius Bryant, photographs by Alexey Moskvin · ISBN 9780847877454

Cobbe draws on more than fifty years of conservation and restoration, from his own Hatchlands Park in Surrey to Castle Howard, Knole, Goodwood and Petworth, and turns it into practical advice: hanging art, choosing historically sympathetic paint colors and window treatments, restoring architectural elements and living with centuries-old character today.

26. The Art of the Bath: Sherle Wagner by Marissa Wagner Geoffroy

Publisher: Rizzoli, September 2026 · 256 pages · foreword by Oliver M. Furth · ISBN 9780847876846

Seventy-five years of Sherle Wagner International, the company that turned bath fittings into sculpture with onyx, malachite and precious metals, shown in bathrooms by designers such as Martyn Lawrence Bullard, Vicente Wolf and Pembrooke & Ives. If it inspires a bathroom of your own, plan the bathroom layout first, then try finishes on a photo of the room with AI bathroom design.

Best Interior Design Books of 2025

Most of the 2025 releases are monographs: each presents the work of one designer or studio in large photographs, so they double as coffee table books. The exceptions are a museum's historic rooms (The Frick Collection) and an anthology of women designers (Making Space).

27. Alfredo Paredes at Home by Alfredo Paredes with Brad Goldfarb

Publisher: Rizzoli, February 2025 · 272 pages · ISBN 9780847845323

The first book by the designer who made his name as chief creative officer for Ralph Lauren tours four of his own homes and the tools he uses in every one: dark wood, iron railings, rustic fabrics, patina and soft furnishings in earth tones, often around a theme drawn from a single object.

28. The World of Peter Dunham by Peter Dunham

Publisher: Vendome Press, April 2025 · 320 pages · ISBN 9780865654440

The Los Angeles designer's first book covers a dozen recent projects, from New York penthouses to California houses, and his own homes, including a pied-à-terre in Paris. Each chapter illustrates one idea of his design (Color, Rhythm, Togetherness and Nature), with many rooms dressed in his own textiles.

29. Retrouvius: Contemporary Salvage by Maria Speake

Publisher: Rizzoli, September 2025 · 272 pages · foreword by Helena Bonham Carter, texts by Emma Crichton-Miller, Bella Freud, Adam Hills and Mary Miers · ISBN 9780847875672

The London studio Retrouvius builds interiors from architectural salvage, and the subtitle, Designing Homes from a Philosophy of Re-Use, sums it up: reclaimed materials given a new purpose, with respect for original designs. Read it with our guide to adaptive reuse, the same idea at the scale of a building.

30. Tom Scheerer: Still Decorating

Publisher: Vendome Press, September 2025 · 320 pages · photographs by Francesco Lagnese · ISBN 9780865654679

Scheerer's third book shows 20 recent projects Up North (Maine, the Hamptons, Greenwich, New York City), Out West (Dallas, Big Sky, Aspen, Jackson Hole) and Down South (mostly Palm Beach), all with the same aim: comfort and ease from good proportions and unpretentious rooms.

31. TORREY: Private Spaces: Great American Design

Publisher: Rizzoli, April 2025 · 416 pages · text by Gay Gassmann, photographs by Manolo Yllera, Douglas Friedman, Tim Lenz and others · ISBN 9780847847730

The first monograph of TORREY, the New York modernist firm Andrew Torrey founded in 2013, shows 23 projects in Manhattan, Miami, London, Los Angeles and Cabo San Lucas. The style is clean and modern, with opulent finishes, rich materials and vintage pieces.

32. The Frick Collection: The Historic Interiors by Xavier F. Salomon

Publisher: Rizzoli Electa, September 2025 · 240 pages · photographs by Miguel Flores-Vianna · ISBN 9780847874361

After the museum's multiyear renovation, its chief curator leads a room-by-room tour of Henry Clay Frick's 1914 house on Fifth Avenue in newly commissioned photographs, from the drawing rooms to the galleries, and tells how it was made with its architects and decorators, among them Elsie de Wolfe (entry 10).

33. Sims Hilditch: Beautifully British Interiors by Giles Kime

Publisher: Rizzoli, September 2025 · 256 pages · preface by Emma Sims-Hilditch · ISBN 9780847874330

The studio's second book presents the English country house look of today in townhouses, country manors and seaside villas, among them a Victorian house in the city, an 18th-century country house and a Jacobean manor. Founder Emma Sims-Hilditch's rule: a house has to work on a functional level before anyone considers the decoration.

34. Design Reimagined: A Fresh and Colorful Take on Timeless Rooms by Corey Damen Jenkins

Publisher: Rizzoli, September 2025 · 272 pages · foreword by Amy Astley · ISBN 9780847874460

Jenkins's second book, after Design Remix, takes you inside ten projects and his mix of vibrant maximalism and youthful traditionalism: classic architectural bones, rich color combinations and bold pattern, with sidebars on dining rooms, powder rooms, living rooms and guest rooms. For the theory behind his palettes, see our guide to color psychology in interior design.

35. Making Space: Interior Design by Women by Jane Hall

Publisher: Phaidon, 2025 · 288 pages · ISBN 9781837290086

A survey of 250 women interior designers of the 20th and 21st centuries, from more than 50 countries, as the Politecnico di Milano library describes it in its book of the week. A reference for anyone who wants to look beyond the usual names of design history.

36. Foundations: Timeless Design That Feels Personal by Nate Berkus

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2025 · 400 pages · with Heather Summerville · ISBN 9781668026137

Nate Berkus's book, written with Heather Summerville, is about what its subtitle promises: timeless design that still feels personal. At 400 pages, it is one of the longest designer books on this list.

37. My Life in Colors by Martin Brudnizki

Publisher: Rizzoli, October 2025 · 304 pages · ISBN 9780847875696

The designer's debut book treats color as the main tool for storytelling and atmosphere, with one chapter for each color. Its examples include the Rococo interiors of Annabel's members' club in London, the soft palette of the Baronessa Suite at the Splendido and the restaurant of Fouquet's New York.

What the New Interior Design Books Have in Common

Read side by side, the 2025 and 2026 releases share six themes. Each one below comes from the publishers' own descriptions of the books, not from a trend forecast.

Re-Use and Salvage

Retrouvius builds homes from architectural salvage, Rizzoli describes Bunny Williams and Elizabeth Lawrence's approach as refinement over replacement, and Leanne Ford tells readers to keep what they can and reuse what they have. Sustainability here means working with what exists before buying new.

Color as the Story

Martin Brudnizki gives each color a chapter of its own, Corey Damen Jenkins builds rooms on rich color combinations and bold pattern, and color is one of the four chapters of Peter Dunham's book.

Designers at Home

Alfredo Paredes tours four of his own homes and Peter Dunham includes his own residences, among them a pied-à-terre in Paris: rooms where the designer is also the client.

The Country House, Updated

Sims Hilditch shows the English country house look of today, Alec Cobbe explains how to balance centuries-old character with modern living, and the Frick Collection book follows a 1914 New York mansion room by room.

Women Leading Design

Making Space surveys 250 women interior designers of the 20th and 21st centuries from more than 50 countries, and women wrote most of the 2026 books on this list: Bunny Williams and Elizabeth Lawrence, Leanne Ford, Fariha Nasir and Marissa Wagner Geoffroy.

Light as a Subject

Nathan Orsman's Light gives lighting a whole book: how illumination shapes interiors, architecture and gardens, project by project.

How to Choose an Interior Design Book

Four questions narrow the list down quickly:

• Rules or pictures? A how-to book such as Ramstedt's or Henderson's explains why a room works; a coffee table book shows finished rooms and leaves the reasons to you. Most readers want one of each.

• Student or homeowner? Students need a textbook (Ching and Binggeli), a book of dimensions (Panero and Zelnik) and a code reference; a homeowner can start with a rules book and add monographs later.

• Which edition? Reference books change with codes and practice: look for the 4th edition of Interior Design Illustrated (2018), the updated and revised Reference & Specification Book (2018) and the 8th edition of The Codes Guidebook for Interiors (2022).

• Will it fit your table? Coffee table books are big: AD at Home measures 10 × 13 inches over 496 pages, and Ralph Lauren: A Way of Living runs to 544 pages.

From Book to Room: Try a Book's Ideas in Your Own Space

A book shows someone else's rooms. To see one of its ideas in your own space, upload a photo of the room to ArchiVinci and describe the look in a sentence (the palette, the materials, the furniture): ArchiVinci generates a new image that follows your photo, in seconds. There is no style menu, so the style lives in your words. A new account starts with 3 free credits.

• For your own room: Redesign your room with AI

Try a Look on a Photo of Your Room

ArchiVinci's AI interior design tool takes a photo of a room and, if you want them, a sentence and one of six lighting buttons: Daylight, Warm light, Twilight, Golden hour, Ambient or Studio light. For one room, start from the pages for kitchens, bathrooms, living rooms or bedrooms; if the room is empty, you can furnish an empty room from its photo; and to test a tile, floor or fabric from a book, you can change one material in a photo with Edit: mark the area, describe the change and apply one of its 103 materials or a photo of your own sample.

Made in the Interior module with Plants under Add object, the Daylight button and the prompt "Biophilic living room: many large leafy plants, oak floor, linen sofa, stone side table, daylight from big windows".

Turn a Line Drawing Into a Render

If you sketch rooms the way the textbooks teach, upload the drawing, or a view exported from your 3D model, and describe the materials: AI rendering in ArchiVinci generates a finished image that follows your drawing. The default engine is asked to keep the perspective and the geometry; that is an instruction to an AI model, not a lock, so check the details.

Example from our AI render page. Left: the uploaded line drawing. Right: the result in the Interior module with the prompt "Warm modern living room with an oak floor, a beige linen sofa, a low travertine coffee table and sheer curtains.", the Daylight button and the default engine.

Put the Book's Measurements on a Plan

Dimensions from Panero and Zelnik, or Ramstedt's rules of thumb, are easiest to judge on a plan of your own room. In Floor Plan Maker you draw the walls, place doors, windows and furniture from a library of 153 pieces and see each room's area and the wall lengths, then view the plan in 3D and walk through it. It runs in a desktop browser, and drawing, 3D, the walkthrough and the exports (DXF, PDF, PNG and more) are free.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which interior design books are new in 2026?

New in 2026 on this list: Bunny Williams and Elizabeth Lawrence: Decoration, Nathan Orsman's Light, Alec Cobbe's Inside the Country Houses of Britain & Ireland and The Art of the Bath: Sherle Wagner (all Rizzoli, September 2026), Leanne Ford's Feel Free Home (Abrams, May 2026) and Fariha Nasir's Home, Improved (Abrams, September 2026).

What is the best interior design book for beginners?

The Interior Design Handbook by Frida Ramstedt. It teaches the rules of thumb behind a balanced room, such as proportion, the size of a coffee table next to a sofa, the height to hang a light and how to use a mood board, in 240 illustrated pages. For a full renovation, add Emily Henderson's The New Design Rules.

Which interior design book is best for learning about sustainable design?

For the ideas, Lance Hosey's The Shape of Green, on why sustainable design also has to be beautiful. For practice, Retrouvius: Contemporary Salvage shows homes made with reclaimed materials, and Bunny Williams and Elizabeth Lawrence: Decoration works with existing furniture and rooms instead of replacing them.

What are the best interior design coffee table books?

Architectural Digest at 100 (a century of the magazine), AD at Home (ten years of AD's homes), Ralph Lauren: A Way of Living, Phaidon's Interiors: The Greatest Rooms of the Century, Beata Heuman's Every Room Should Sing, Athena Calderone's Live Beautiful and Amber Lewis's Made for Living. The last three also explain how their rooms are put together.

Are coffee table books still in style?

Yes. Publishers keep releasing them: on 26 October 2026, the first page of Rizzoli's list of recently published interior design books showed 15 titles, all from September 2026. Chosen well, they are references as well as decoration.

How do I teach myself interior design?

Read one rules book (Ramstedt or Henderson) and one reference (Ching and Binggeli, or Panero and Zelnik), then practice: draw your own rooms with the book's dimensions in a free floor plan creator, try colors and materials on photos of your rooms, and take a course when you want feedback; see our list of architecture courses.

Are there free interior design books?

Yes, legally: The Decoration of Houses (1897) by Edith Wharton and Ogden Codman Jr. and The House in Good Taste (1913) by Elsie de Wolfe are free on Project Gutenberg as EPUB, Kindle and HTML files, and Project Gutenberg lists both as public domain in the US. Newer books are under copyright: borrow them from a library instead of downloading unofficial PDFs.