No one will ever accuse Sera Hersham-Loftus of being tasteful. Still, her over-the-top decorating is a lot of fun. Her style could be described as somewhere between early brothel and late bordello. According to the dust jacket from her new book, Seductive Interiors, she is an “innovator of the seductive and boudoir trend”.

Lush rooms are richly layered with brocades and satin. Lampshades and tablecloths drip with heavy fringe. Sofas and alcoves are cushioned with velvet pillows and leopard print. Dramatic lighting in dusky interiors creates sultry ambience.

Some of the spaces have the quality of childhood fantasy where you might dress up in unlikely costumes and act out stories; others are like stage sets. Many of the rooms have the hallmarks often associated with romantic interiors: candles, polished silver, lace and flowers.

My favourite is a barge that travels the waterways in London. It has the appeal of a gypsy caravan and offers a cozy, built-in day bed where you could curl up with a good book – or friend.

Maybe tasteful is overrated.

- Jane

A few months back, we added a new title to our collection called Fresh American Spaces by Annie Selke. If you are yearning for a splash of colour to brighten winter-weary interiors, this book will give you a fix.

Selke is a product designer whose popular home furnishings frequently decorate the pages of shelter magazines such as House Beautiful and Better Homes & Gardens. She identifies five distinct design/lifestyle perspectives that she uses to guide her design.

The first one, which she labels Everyday Exuberance, is characterized by vibrant colour. I am captivated by a room inspired by an exotic rug. Here, walls are painted lilac and furniture is upholstered in pink and burnt orange. Sweet colours of the same intensity are balanced by earth tones. The result is a knock-out.

Exciting colour is also a theme in her Cultured Eclectic outlook where colour appears in ethnic textiles, such as Afghani Suzani embroidery and Indonesian batiks. Happy Preppy borrows crayon-box colours to cheer up the rooms.

If you prefer to colour your world with subtlety, she shows the way with Nuanced Neutral and Refined Romantic. She advocates a restrained approach to romantic style that “is about incorporating beauty, grace, and elegance into a space without a heavy hand”.

I like this book a lot. Out in the design world, there is a swirling sea of ideas; if you subscribe to too many of them, your interior landscape becomes chaotic. Selke has the ability to sift through the ocean, distill ideas that work together and help the reader learn from her experience.

Valentine’s Day is sneaking up on us and ready to ambush the unprepared. “And the lonely and vulnerable,” added a crusty colleague who happened to read what I was writing.

Perhaps you need to know that I am a cynical woman of a certain age who tends to think of it as a Hallmark holiday. In other words, an event promoted by those with a commercial interest in it.

Now that I have that out in the open, here are three books from the collection that might appeal to your romantic nature.

Simply Romantic Decorating: Creating Elegance and Intimacy Throughout Your Home promotes a romantic style based on ruffles and floral fabrics. If you have a gilded white grand piano, the author will show you how to stage it. Hint: you will need a hand-blown Murano glass chandelier and a fabulous bay window.

You know, sometimes you just can’t take the cynic out of the woman.

Beautiful Bedrooms, a book from the Better Homes and Gardens franchise, offers decorating ideas for the room most often associated with romance. Happily, it’s not all ruffles and flowers.

There is a glamorous room with lilac walls and drapes and a chic rose velvet chaise. Another inviting space offers an understated palette of pale greens, blues and cream. It features fine artwork and a towering tester bed.

Romantic English Homes, a new book by Robert O’Byrne shows the romance that comes to a home with age and a storied past. You get to travel through Austen and Bronte landscapes.

The book offers a layered approach to decorating by people who love to collect things - a style that creates the impression that successive generations have occupied a home. The author notes that this is often an illusion.

But hey, isn’t that what romance is all about?