Romantic Homes: A Little Romance Between the Covers

***revised 4/10/2000***

Whether your dream is a cottage garden, a bungalow retreat or to own a country B&B you will find lots of inspiration in Romantic Homes.

Formerly published as Victorian Homes, Romantic Homes seems to have been changing over the last few years, steadily making improvements and refining its focus. I can tell. Just this year Romantic Homes started publishing on a monthly basis (from bi-monthly). This should bring the subscription costs down substantially. With only about 96 pages with a cover price of $3.99 ($24.95/year for a subscription) this magazine is still a bit pricey for the quality of content. A small magazine, Romantic Homes would benefit from more features, regular columns and news. This magazine is not full of advertising so there should be room to slightly increase the amount of ad space in order to keep the cover price and subscription down.

Romantic Homes (Casual Elegance, Personal Style) certainly is much more descriptive of the magazine’s overall focus and design attitude than its previous title. Romantic Homes also seems to set it apart from many of the other Victoriana-themed home magazines on the market today with quality features that do more than just showcase recreations of Victorian décor. This magazine shows you how to create a feel of romance in every room of your house. No longer pigeon-holed in a certain era, there is much more room to feature an eclectic range of styles.

Like most other shelter magazines, Romantic Homes offers features on interior design, gardening, collecting, art and antiques all pulled together with the overarching theme of romance – lots of lace, chintzes and florals. Just this side of precious, most of the featured styles cozy and inviting and yet retain polish and sophistication. The photography is very good and the choice of items featured in the editorial pages of the magazine seem to be reasonably priced.