Traditional Home Brings Elegance to Decorating

What makes a home unique? Most would say that the defining factor is the decor, both inside and out, and most people agree that the modeling and design of a house are what stand out most when they visit a home for the first time. One magazine that covers this subject well is Traditional Home, a magazine about home decorating and design.

Basic Contents of This Magazine:

Traditional Home varies in length from month to month, with some issues containing as few as 130 pages and others as many as 200 pages. Regular monthly sections include:

Marketplace- This is a buyer’s section, with interesting gift and decorating ideas.

Departments- These vary from month to month. Some of the departments that appear in most issues include “Showhouse Showcase” and “Icons”.

In Every Issue- The things you can count on finding in every issue, and they include “From the Editor”, “Our Readers Write”, and “Reader’s Resource”.

Longer featured articles make up the rest of most issues of Traditional Home and there are about six of them in every issue. On occasion, Traditional Home also has some special sections that center on a specific decorating theme, on a specific city, on a holiday, etc.

Cost to Subscribe:

Traditional Home sells for a base subscription price of $22 for eight issues (one year). Working out the math, this makes each issue cost $2.75. This is high for a subscription rate, but it does represent a savings of 44% off the $4.95 cover price. It takes a good deal of searching to find a better deal on the internet. In fact, many sources I checked were selling this magazine for more than the publishers base rate.

Magazine Website/Customer Service:

To find out more about Traditional Home on the internet, the place to check is the web site, traditionalhome.com. The web site presents a very accurate snapshot of the magazine itself, with separate sections for home decorating, remodeling, entertaining, gardening, etc. If customer service is what you need, you can send a message through the web site.

Final Thoughts:

Traditional Home is a nice little magazine about home living; or more specifically, how to make a home look great, both inside and out. This magazine takes a slightly different approach to homes when compared to others of its genre. Instead of focusing on size and modern amenities, Traditional Home directs its attention toward classic style and elegance with an up- to- date twist.
Home decorating/improvement are the main subjects in Traditional Home and there are several departments and main features dedicated to adding a touch of classic style to your house. One article might talk about the addition of candles to your bedroom. Another could talk about adding vases or silver teapots and kettles to your dining room or kitchen. Still another might focus on the architecture of your home and how you can improve the outside appearance. These features and departments all have the same goal in mind: To take a plain, drab room or exterior and spice it up with some old- fashioned elegance.

Not all of the pages in Traditional Home are dedicated to the subject of decorating. The magazine does offer a few more subject areas to make it better rounded. It is common, for example, to find an article or two about home entertainment and this is especially true around the holiday season. There are also some articles that are indirectly related to travel. The reason I say “indirectly” is because they don’t focus so much on traveling someplace as they do the reason for traveling, which is often to visit a unique antique shop or something similar.

Traditional Home is a classy magazine and there are many things I like about this publication. One nice quality is that the suggestions for decorating are not comprised of items far out of one’s financial reach. This is not a rich person’s magazine. There are some more expensive ideas presented here but there are an equal number of less expensive ideas for both decorating and for entertaining. Another quality I like is the personal touch so common in most of the articles. Ordinary people like those in a typical suburban neighborhood offer their personal stories about why they chose to remodel their kitchen the way they did; why they celebrate holidays the way they do; or why they added a collection of antique art to their family room. These personal touches help make the magazine more then just a buyer’s guide- they make it a magazine that is nice to read and relate to.

Advertisements are common in Traditional Home, but they don’t saturate the magazine like they do in some of its sister publications. Ads exist on about 40 percent of the pages and if you can get past the opening barrage of ads (about 20 pages of ads right as you open the cover), you will find that the remaining pages of the magazine have relatively few solicitations for merchandise.

Overall, Traditional Home is a nice magazine about homes, decorating, and entertaining with plenty of colorful photos that offer great interior visual appeal. It is amazing what can be done to an ordinary room with some dedicated effort, and Traditional Home aims to guide readers in this direction; helping to turn a plain, boring home into a feast for the visual senses.