Elle Decor is a nice magazine that concentrates its efforts on home improvement and overall enjoyment of life. This magazine believes in giving one's residence a certain unique charm and it has words of advice for redecorating every room of the home. In one issue, the reader may find some articles about bedroom furniture. Another article may focus on adding new towels and a matching shower curtain to the bathroom. The goal of these and other articles like them is to make your home look unique and interesting.

Many magazines offer a surprise or two and one of the big surprises with Elle Decor is that it isn't entirely about home decorating. There are other articles in each issue: Articles about food (often complete with recipes), travel, and other topics can be found in every copy of Elle Decor. But one thing I have noticed is that the travel articles still manage to combine some elements of home decorating. These articles talk about the travel destination, but they also point out the decor inside certain places of lodging, the artistic nature of certain landmarks, etc.

I like the design ideas presented in this magazine and I agree that many of them are eye- catching and interesting. However, I don't think I will be implementing very many of the changes suggested by Elle Décor due to the high price of the merchandise. The featured articles usually don't mention the price of the items on display, but the departments often do, and many of the dollar signs are jaw- dropping, to say the least. It is common, for example, to find things like a small bathroom cabinet selling for more than one thousand dollars; a kitchen range selling for more than three thousand dollars; etc . As much as I like the idea of home improvement, I don't think I am willing to spend money at these levels. There are a few less expensive items, but you have to search for them and they are usually nothing more than small objects, like a centerpiece for a table, a napkin holder, a pitcher, etc.

One other fact that will bother some readers is the number of advertisements in each issue. More than half the pages of each issue are covered with ads and it is common to find two dozen or more pages of ads at the opening of each issue. This is excessive saturation, and it gets in the way of enjoying the reading.

Overall, however, I still like Elle Decor and I will continue to enjoy the issues that arrive at my front door each month. There are some great ideas for home decorating in this magazine and some unique gift ideas as well. I won't likely implement many of these changes due to the cost, but I like the way things look and I like the presentation and writing enough to give Elle Decor a recommendation.

For someone in the business of decor of fashion, Elle Decor may be a coffee table staple but for a home remodeler and self taught home decor aficionado, this magazine does not provide much practical information. I find the decor beautiful but impractical due to cost and unsuitable for daily life for most applications. If you have the budget for Hermes chairs, this magazine is for you but if not, you may be like me; delighted by the eye candy yet unable to apply them to or pay for them in your lifestyle. We strive for quality and value in our decor and remodels, and are able to find inspiration in many decor magazines but I find that Elle Decor's suggestions and layouts would suit those with a half a million dollar decor budget, not the average decoration budget.

Elle Decor (US) magazine is the best of them all - by a long shot. I subscribe to, and buy off the shelf, about 10-15 different decor magazines a month from around the world. Elle Decor is the best.
It dosn't matter what style you like, this magazine covers it, with great style and always with integrity. The editor in cheif, Margaret Russel deserves a medal.

I was a loyal subscriber to Elle Decor until they started using endangered species' pelts as decorative accents in their magazine photos. This latest (November 2006) issue was the last straw - featuring a zebra's pelt used as rug in a guady room full of gold details. Three more zebra pelt rugs are shown prominently in the magazine's pages, obviously planted in the featured homes by the publication's staff, who clearly think endangered species pelts are the latest fashion. When I wrote to express my concern about endangered animal parts featured in an earlier issue, I received no response from the magazine - they only print glowing, fawning letters to the editor on their "Mailbox" page...never any criticisms. I am taking this magazine off my list of home decor magazines that I subscribe to - I recommend Home magazine, Architectural Digest, or O at Home instead. Style without conscience is shallow.

I'm an interior design major and my mother bought me a subscription to this magazine for Christmas this year...I love it! A previous review mentioned that this magazine advertises things that were wayyy out of her budget. Well, that may be true but if you're creative, it can give you a lot of great inspiration!

I am a long time reader of Elle Decor and I adore it! I save every issue and constantly look at them for inspiration. As one of the few design magazines to not go totally down market in the past few years, I really appreciate the integrity of the houses and apartments ED shows.

Every time the magazine appears in my mailbox I devour it cover to cover and spend the next week tweaking my apartment. The magazine is a cheat sheet for how I aspire to live.

If you want to look at bad repro furniture, tract mansions, and sterile environments-look elsewhere.

I love this magazine. I read many home magazines and pick up a few of the foreign editions of Elle Decor (the Italian one is great but the British one is zippy but very down-market), but the American one is my favorite. It's an amazing source book and is packed with ideas. I love decorating, and I have a modern city apartment and a traditional cottage at the shore, and there's something to catch my eye in every issue. I'm constantly tearing out pages with ideas for future projects. In fact, I often buy a second copy so I have one to save if I've ripped out a lot.
Some magazines are stuck in a design rut, the same old thing every month, but Elle Decor seems continually fresh. They show a really wide range of design styles, always in great taste, and lots of things to shop for without seeming too cataloguey. And I like that they feature some houses in far-away places (although they could look a bit harder to find some more good homes here in the south), and that they have a good travel feature in every issue.
There are some fun pages near the front that show new products and stores, and a great "top ten" shopping guide, plus articles on what you should know about in the world of art and antiques (I've learned a great deal from these, if you care about design, you should save them) but it's the interiors that truly inspire me-they might have a fancy, over-the-top house in the wine country followed by a tiny studio apartment in Paris. But even the grand places don't seem stuffy, it's all very personal and inviting, maybe because they photograph a lot of the homeowners and usually talk about how they live there and why.
If you like stylish people and places, and care about great decorating, architecture and design, this is the magzine for you.

If it had more advice and ideas, it would be a better magazine. The magazine has TONS of ads... And, many of the ads are for companies who only sell to the trade (which makes them pretty useless).

As another reviewer pointed out, the British version is much better, with great features and much better graphic layout. The U.S. edition is all ads with very little interest or resources regardless of your budget. Skip the U.S. version totally.

The first Elle Decor that I got in the mail I sat down to flip through it page by page. After going through the entire thing, I had to go back to the table of contents to specifically look for any articles. Yes, there are articles, but you have to do some hunting, and even when you find the page number, the article is usually just a small paragraph in the corner of a page surrounded by ads. On the plus side, the magazine is nicely bound and thicker than most house decorating magazines.

The reason I am not giving it 1 star is because there are some good decorating ideas for someone with contemporary taste. The furniture is pricey (couple thousand for a simple plastic chair, for example) but easy to emulate for the frugally-minded person. You could easily find knock-offs at your local Target. If, however, you wanted the exact piece and had the money to pay for it, you would have to travel to select places in New York or California, or get in contact with the artist him/herself. That is just not practical for most homeowners.

The decorating style is very modern, with simple clean lines, minimal distractions, and 1 of 2 color schemes - either bright colors (think Todd Oldham of Target) or black/silver. Occasionally they will feature eclectic styles, such as log benches from one artist in CA. But for the most part, highly contemporary. The magazine is best geared towards professional interior decorators with elite clients.

This magazine is so full of ads. The worst part is that most of the ads are for things that I could never afford. By the time I flip through all the ads, it only take 15 minutes to see everything that is in the magazine. Also, there is little to no explanation.

While other reviews are far from glowing, I find that I love this magazine and await its arrival each month. While there are plenty of ads (like any magazine), these ads are as interesting and visually stimulating as the wonderful articles. I subscribe to over 10 architecture and interior design magazines and this is by far my favorite. It highlights interiors which are stylishly current while staying traditionally rooted. Definitely an Urbanist's magazine.

The covers are very deceiving! This magazine is so full of articles that I can hardly find anything else in it! The publishers might as well give them out for free considering all the money they're making off the advertisements. It's disappointing to say the least...

I mainly subscribed to this magazine for the good overall reviews I read here. I subscribed to it less than a year ago and I wanted to write this review from the first edition I received. The magazine does not contain any valuable information about decorating or anything else for that matter. The magazine is loaded with ads (that is related to decorating or not). For the August/2003 there are 89 pages of ads out of the 166 pages, which is more than half of the magazine!! (Excluding pages that contain half page of ad).

Do not waist your money on this magazine!

I ordered a subscription to this magazine and am incredibly disappointed. There are more ads in the magazine than there are anything else. The few articles and pictorials they have are okay, but being able to read a magazine cover to cover in under an hour isn't very satisfying, even if there was 1 or 2 interesting articles.

They should call this magazine Pieter Decor, his stories in the april issue are fabulous!

I love this magazine for it's inspiration. However, just looking at the rooms in the pictures tells me that it's way too expensive for my taste. Like someone else mentioned, they usually feature the homes of top designers--which doesn't mean anything to me or you (unless you're an ambitious interior designer, of course). One thing I've learned: You can recreate the idea of some of the luxurious rooms seen in this magazine by bringing it more down-to-earth. You don't have to use posh fabrics, orginal art, or authentic antiques. There are lots of affordable "look-alikes" out there that one can use to get the general idea or feeling of the million-dollar-room from which they drew the inspiration. Also style and form are pretty much universal. You can change the color scheme and texture of any room you see in a magazine and thus create an entirely different feel--even though the underlying design is identical. Just a tip for any current subscribers out there who may be wondering what in the world to do with this type of magazine. ;-)

If you can get a hold of it, the British version of this magazine, Elle Decoration, has advice and ideas for all incomes. It also highlights more items that relate to a design scheme featured in the article. Usually there are about three of these in every issue. My sister in Los Angeles gets it, and when i visit her every year, i make a point of catching up on all her back issues.

i love the photography of PIETER ESTERSOHN!!

I have a subscription to this magazine but find it too "designer-ish" for me. It focuses a lot on the who's who of the interior design world and often showcases items way out of my budget. The articles are well written and good for entertainment though.