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The past four months have got us lusting over interiors like never before. From our budding relationship with our house plants (no pun intended) to our eagerly growing collection of scented candles, we’re spending just as much money on small home improvements as we are heatwave-appropriate summer dresses.
One way to elevate your home interiors without the need to knock down walls/pick up a paintbrush is with a collection of the best coffee table books. Created to give insight into the lives of the subjects and covering everything from fashion to photography; home styling to popular culture, the best coffee table books are meaningful, inspirational and there to make a statement. This is in stark contrast to their wordier counterparts – read: the novels which, despite your best intentions, gather dust on bookshelf as you binge on Selling Sunset.
Not only are coffee table books a great gift-to-self, but they’re also the perfect gift for anyone who might like to update their home or awaken their curiosity for fashion/beauty/culture. Think: the dreamiest of housewarming gifts for your friend who has just switched pads.
If it’s interiors inspo you’re after, there are a number of interior coffee table books worthy of a spot in your collection. Take , for example. The founder of The White Company, Chrissie Rucker, takes us inside her three homes and inspires us with her minimalist aesthetic.
There are also many travel-themed coffee table books out there, to awaken the senses and spark wanderlust – important/perhaps slightly painful when foreign travel is tricky. is one for avid travellers and perhaps our favourite coffee table book of them all. It’s packed with striking illustrations of the glamorous American holiday destination, from the restaurants to the hotels and boutiques that have been enjoyed for generations.
Popular culture fans should make a beeline for , or . Yep, it exists. Fashion aficionados will love to drool over the images inside and . And to support the work of black creatives, add to your collection pronto.
The world of coffee table books is a vast and (at times) overwhelming one, so we’ve decided to bring you an edit of the very best coffee table books – worthy of a spot in any well-appointed home. We’ll await the snap on Instagram.
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Best coffee table book for wanderlust
This coffee table book is filled with images of the enchanting gardens, villas and must-see spots, of the beautiful Italian island of Capri, including the Piazzetta, which is considered the center hub of the area. Across 272 pages, you’ll learn about the jet-setting style icons, poets and artists who have returned to the region over the years.
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Best coffee table book for fashion aficionados
This coffee table book is a complete catalogue of Ford’s design work for both Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent between 1994 to 2004. With beautiful photography and industry anecdotes, it chronicles not only Tom Ford’s fashion designs for both luxury fashion houses, but also explores his grand visions for the design of an entire brand, from its architecture to its store design and advertising.
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Best coffee table book for luxury fashion advocates
This coffee table book compiles in one place – for the first time ever – every Dior haute couture collection, including the ready-to-wear collections after the arrival of John Galliano (when ready-to-wear presentations took on a new importance), and the first two collections designed by creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri who was appointed in 2016.
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Best coffee table book for championing black creatives
This book addresses the radical transformation taking place between fashion and art today: one which has seen an increase in the featuring of Black figures and Black models, making for increasingly inclusive fashion and art communities.
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Best coffee table book for new home owners
In this coffee table book, Katie Watson-Smyth shares her secrets on decorating your home with style, from inspiration for every budget and how to buy a sofa to how to get the lighting right in every room.
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Best coffee table book for powerful imagery
Photography duo Mert and Marcus have collated their very best work – for brands including Giorgio Armani, Roberto Cavalli, Fendi, Miu Miu, Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Givenchy, and Lancome and celebrities like Madonna and Rihanna – into one beautifully curated coffee table book. We’re huge fans of this one.
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Best coffee table book for an injection of popular culture
Need we say more? Any popular culture geeks should snap up this updated collection of Kim Kardashian’s selfies, ‘cos, well… why not?
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Best coffee table book for minimalists
We’re already huge fans of The White Company’s bedding and candles – who isn’t? – and now, we celebrate the brand with this stunning coffee table book. The founder of The White Company, Chrissie Rucker, takes us inside her three homes and inspires us with her minimalist aesthetic.
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Best coffee table book for fashion history
This coffee table book explores the five central themes of the suit, the camellia, jewellery, fragrances and makeup, and the little black dress. It follows each through the ages, unpicking how they’ve been rediscovered and reinvented through different generations of fashion designers.
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Best coffee table book for architecture
This coffee table book collates 100 of the world’s most influential pioneering homes in the architectural space, all of which have been designed in the past two decades by the likes of John Pawson, Richard Meier, Shigeru Ban, Tadao Ando, Zaha Hadid, Herzog & de Meuron, Daniel Libeskind, Alvaro Siza, and Peter Zumthor.
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Best coffee table book for young fashion lovers
This book is a celebration of the entire fashion industry. It’s great for young fashion lovers looking to deepen their knowledge, because it’s easy to use, filled with inspirational images, and organised as an A-Z guide of names. There are 576 entries across the categories of clothing and accessory designers, photographers, institutions, models and those iconic individuals who instigated or symbolise a whole fashion movement.
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Best coffee table book for investment value
This definitive coffee table book on Alexander McQueen between 1969 and 2010 invites readers into the creative mind and world of one of Britain’s most brilliant, daring and provocative fashion designers.
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Best coffee table book for Ibiza frequenters
This coffee table book is a collection of beautiful images of the island that has served as an escape for artists, creatives and musicians since the ’30s. It covers everything from the bohemian interiors that Ibiza is famed for, to the beautiful scenery and sandy beaches.
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Best coffee table book for summer reading
With imagery from more than 20 cities across six continents of the world, this coffee table book by Gray Malin offers up a visually stimulating account of the world’s beaches from above. It’s packed full of aerial photographs which have been shot from helicopters.
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Best coffee table book for unforgettable photography
This coffee table book explores the central subject of Slim Aarons’s career: extraordinary women. All of whom comes from the upper echelons of high society, the arts, fashion and Hollywood, no less. The book presents the women who most influenced Slim’s life and work from Audrey Hepburn to Jackie Kennedy, Diana Vreeland and Marilyn Monroe.
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Best coffee table book for Londoners
A must-buy for any London dweller, Siobhan Ferguson’s Pretty City London is the perfect coffee table book for finding out about the secluded mews, undiscovered cafes and flower markets and tree-lined streets you’ve never stumbled across.
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Best coffee table book for feminists
Perfect for the feminist in your life, this coffee table book is a collection of female-focused photographs and interviews with women across the world. It’s a beauty and worthy of a spot in your collection.
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Best coffee table book for costume fashion
Now updated and expanded, this coffee table book uncovers the past five years of the Met Costume Institute’s exhibitions and galas through the lens of Vogue.
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Best coffee table book for foodies
This coffee table book explores 60 different restaurants which fuse their delicious dishes with clever twists and stunning interiors. With Delicious Places, you can dive into a new wave of food culture that celebrates daring concepts, inventive locations, and a fresh take on sustainable, hyper-local cuisine – all lead by a new breed of visionaries located right across the world.
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Best coffee table book for countryside dwellers
Lifestyle blogger Erin Gates knows a thing or two about interior design. Here, she inspires us to create peace in a family home. The book is packed full of inspiring tips and imagery to flick through at leisure.
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Best coffee table book for interior design inspo
There’s no better way to get inspiration for your home decor than by gawping at some of the most influential rooms in the world of interior design. These spaces have made their mark on the world in one way or another, and the snaps of them totally beat scrolling through Pinterest for ideas.
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Best coffee table book for motivation and inspiration
If the most successful people of the world could tell you just one thing, what would it be? This coffee table book serves up advice from presidents, actors and influential people of the world. We’re talking the likes of Bill Clinton, Clare Balding, Stephen Fry, Dame Judi Dench, James Corden, Margaret Atwood, Sir David Attenborough, Annie Lennox, Andy Murray, Joanna Lumley, Anthony Bourdain, Marina Abramovic, Sir Richard Branson.
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Best coffee table book for Millennials
Rihanna released her first-ever coffee table book with Phaidon back in 2019, much to the delight of everyone in the GLAMOUR office. It’s packed full of over 1,000 photos of herself (yes, really), from shoots to pap shots and stage shots. It’s a feast for the eyes, celebrating her life as a musician, performer, designer, and entrepreneur.
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Best coffee table book for portraiture
This coffee book—written by Taína Caragol, Dorothy Moss, Richard Powell, and Kim Sajet—offers readers a deep dive into the paintings that became some of the most celebrated portraits of a generation when first unveiled, with anecdotes from the Obamas and insights into the world of portraiture as a whole.
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Best coffee table book for frequenters of Soho House
Eat Drink Nap – a 300-page highly illustrated coffee table book with a foreword from founder Nick Jones – features newly commissioned photography from leading food and interiors photographers Mark Seelen and Jean Cazals. It shares the secrets of the Soho House way of doing things, from how to make people feel at home to how to *nail* home decor. If you’re a Soho Farmhouse/The Ned/Babington House frequenter then you’ve got to add it to your collection.
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Best coffee table book for snoozers
Name a time better than bedtime. Exactly. Channel your passion of sleep into the pages of this coffee table book, which whisk you through the bedrooms of queens, emperors, designers and decorators. It also showcases the bedrooms of today’s most exclusive hotels which we’re *dying* to stay in.
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Best coffee table book for men’s fashion insights
This coffee table book was published just before Ralph Lauren’s 80th birthday back in 2019. It’s a celebration of the life of the iconic American fashion designer, taking you right back to his childhood and packed with beautiful imagery.
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Best coffee table book for looking forward
One to sit next to the book, this coffee table book gathers the creme de la creme from newspapers’ travel column and offers 150 bite-sized itineraries of the world’s most incredible cities, from Abu Dhabi to Zurich.
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Best coffee table book for high-fashion imagery
Packed in fashion designer Prabual Gurung’s monograph is beautiful imagery aplenty of mood boards, runway shots and sketches which let us into the mind of the genius.
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Best coffee table book for entrepreneurs
Over 200,000 startups launch in the capital every single year. In this coffee table book, you’ll find stories from 30 of the most creative of them, from right across the capital. Whether it’s a digital apps or a distilleries, these small businesses have big ambitions to change the way we eat, shop, play and view the world. And you’re about to get inspired.
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Best coffee table book for escapism
Published to accompany the V&A museum’s incredible exhibition Tim Walker: Wonderful Things, this coffee table book is a journey through the creative mind of one of the world’s most inventive photographers. It features over 100 photographs to admire.
