Today, I was flipping through a new House Beautiful title: 1000 Sensational Makeovers. It offers a fairly predictable collection of lovely rooms from the pages of the magazine. If you enjoy the magazine, you will like the book.

It offers a lot of good ideas in a condensed format; they are numbered and organized by six basic design elements. However, if you are expecting to see transformations demonstrated by before/after photos or a description of the process, you will be disappointed.

I am often intrigued by the quirky things I notice and enjoy in new design books. Two ideas that impressed me here involve the clever use of maps. In an attic study, a map of the world was used to paper a canted wall in an alcove. Framed maps on an adjoining wall reinforce the idea. (#445 on p. 439).

Another designer used a framed series of maps – sand-coloured plats of Miami Beach in 1943 – to cover a large wall from baseboard to ceiling. (#480 on p. 470).

These ideas made me think of the map-covered boxes in Design Sponge at Home and sent me out to see what else I could find with a Google search.

A lot, it turns out.

Freelance writer, Kit Pollard, gathered some nifty ideas into a story about decorating with maps and globes.

Nate Berkus offers a video that shows an attractive chest of drawers with a map applied to its surface, while Martha Stewart decorates a fireplace screen and roller blinds with maps.

At home, one of my favourite accessories is a reproduction of an old planning map of Calgary bought at the Glenbow Museum shop many years ago.

Apparently I am not alone in my fondness for maps.