By Ariel Okin
Ariel Okin’s new book from Rizzoli, New York, The Happy Home: Layered Interiors for Joyful Living, delivers exactly what its title promises. It is exuberant, cheerful —a color-saturated celebration of interior design that arrives as a timely source of joy.
Okin’s rooms delight. Her color choices are bold and layered—pea-green grasscloth, plummy walls, pool-blue Murano glass—yet they feel entirely intentional. Her confident use of color transforms spaces into homes her clients actually want to inhabit, not just photograph.
And yet to my eye, in the arc of American interiors, none of this feels frivolous. You can trace a lineage to Dorothy Draper’s exuberant romanticism and Mario Buatta’s chintz-filled comfort in her lacquered cabinetry, aubergine bars, and verdigris accents. Her aesthetic also seems to draw on contemporary voices — Miles Redd, Katie Ridder, and Mark D. Sikes.
But Okin has a unique focus: She thinks like a journalist (which, I suppose, I appreciate), breaking down her color decisions with actual reasoning. The sections on mudrooms, powder rooms, and primary bedrooms aren’t just pretty pictures—they’re instructive, grounded in how people actually live. It’s color with a purpose.
What distinguishes this book is Okin’s fundamental premise: joy isn’t ornamental—it’s structural. In a discipline that typically subordinates color to spatial function, she inverts the hierarchy entirely. The argument is both intellectually considered and quietly refreshing.
I’ve observed that design books often choose between accessibility and sophistication. Okin refuses that compromise—delivering accessible inspiration, aspiration, and education in equal measure.
THE HAPPY HOME: LAYERED INTERIORS FOR JOYFUL LIVING, from Rizzoli New York. Forward by Lena Dunham. Principal photography by Donna Dotan.
Available from The Rizzoli Bookstore, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and IndieBound.