School supplies…check. Lunch boxes…packed. Alarm clock…set. School is back in session. Fortunately, the home decorating enthusiast will enjoy a required reading list packed with new and inspiration-packed design books. One volume even illustrates study solutions for kids…not a bad way to take the bite out of homework.

Apparel-turned-interior designer and master of balance and symmetry Mary McDonald will release her first book this fall. Readers will enjoy more than 300 pages that showcase a decade of interiors work from the tastemaker dubbed a “decorating daredevil” by Domino and perennial favorite of House Beautiful.

Expect multiple themes throughout—the book is about style in general, according to the award-winning designer. Readers will pick up plenty of how-to tips because of McDonald’s careful detailing of the colors, fabrics and accessories she used to pull each interior together.

“I’m like Eloise—a little bit mischievous, but, at the same time, I like formal things,” McDonald says. “I grew up in a house that was kind of ’70s, but my mother also had formal tastes. Things that seemed ladylike and mature influenced me. In my mind, they were glamorous. Today, though, like everyone else, I am influenced by whatever the current movement is in the world. This is the fun part.”

According to the publisher: “Mary McDonald Interiors” is a must for anyone who loves sophisticated, ravishing interiors.

Good design is not just for adult rooms, according to Susanna Salk, author of “Room for Children: Stylish Spaces for Sleep and Play.” Treat children’s spaces with creative seriousness, the author champions in her photo-packed hardcover. The quick read presents rooms for babies, toddlers, tweens and teens, all of which were created by top-notch designers including Kelly Wearstler, Charlotte Moss, Alessandra Branca, Amanda Nisbet and Thomas Jayne.

Salk’s philosophy is simple: Engage children in the design process while avoiding age-specific products and prepackaged goods.

“Treat the child’s room with the reverence and deep thinking that you would any room,” Salk says. “But ultimately, the child needs to breathe and grow, and not be squashed by too much perfection.”

In addition to bedrooms, “Room for Children” presents both work and play spaces that have been thoughtfully designed for kids’ specific wants and needs.

Thomas O’Brien’s new volume is not the usual designer retrospective. Instead, the product and interior designer, Target partner and founder of New York’s influential Aero Studios offers a “deliberate meditation on a philosophy of modernism that runs throughout his design work.”

Organized into seven extensive chapters, each portrays a single home’s unique modern style alongside essays that are as engaging as the book’s photography is beautiful.

The reader travels from an antique Connecticut country house to the art-filled studio modernism of O’Brien’s own 1930s New York City apartment. A wealth of previously unpublished details, pictures, images and anecdotes are included.

Gales Steves serves up a self-help book that is especially timely given today’s changing economy and evolving lifestyles. The book goes beyond what’s clever to delve deep into home customization.

“We used to be a society that said, ‘Don’t improve. Move,’ ” says Steves, former Home magazine editor. Today, it’s all about what she calls the art of “RE” … rethinking, reimagining, readjusting, rediscovering, rearranging, reclaiming, recycling and replacing.

Steves interviewed nearly 300 families while writing the book. The result: the opposite of a one-size-fits-all approach.

Rather than rely on conventional room names, such as living room, bedroom or home office, “Right-Sizing” is arranged in chapters that target activity: Where You Cook, Where You Eat, Where You Relax, Where You Work and Where You Store. By studying activity, rather than the room, she helps the reader to analyze and rethink her existing space, and develop design solutions that simply seem, in a word, right.

Mary Randolph Carter’s newest book is an affirmation of how most people live today: “imperfectly” with the messy things they love. Carter, a designer and longtime creative director for Ralph Lauren, illustrates how to do so creatively, happily, and with considerable style in her new book. The reader is allowed to look in on how real-life tastemakers (photographers, textile designers, fashion designers, writers, artists) have learned to live well among their “passions, histories, conveniences and inconveniences.” Essays accompany each exploration; consider Carter’s musings on clutter versus mess, open windows and unmade beds.

Combining practical tips with a liberating philosophy—“Don’t scrub the soul out of your home” and “Make room for what you love”—this volume celebrates living beautifully and happily without the fuss.