If you’ve ever watched a home makeover show and thought, “Cool, but who has that kind of money?” the book Open House: Reinventing Space for Simple Living will feel like a deep, calming breath. Written by actor-turned-designer Amanda Pays and her husband, actor and serial renovator Corbin Bernsen, this coffee-table book is really a field guide to making older, slightly wonky houses feel bright, modern, and livablewithout blowing your budget.

Instead of glossy perfection and price-is-no-object makeovers, Open House leans into realistic budgets, clever reuse, and the kind of layered, relaxed style you can actually live with. Think: vintage finds, painted floors, open layouts, and plenty of natural light. It’s part inspiration, part practical manual, and part family scrapbook of decades of renovations.

Meet the couple behind Open House

From cameras to concrete

Amanda Pays and Corbin Bernsen didn’t start out as designers or builders. You might recognize Bernsen from his role on L.A. Law or from countless film and TV appearances, while Pays made her name on series like Max Headroom. Over time, though, their real-life passion shifted from scripts and sets to floor plans and salvaged doors.

Early in their marriage, they renovated their first home in Los Angelesso successfully that comedian Steve Martin eventually bought it, furniture and all. That experience helped crystalize two truths for them: they loved creating homes, and they needed to find ways to do it without “breaking the bank” every time. Over the next few decades, they moved again and again, renovating each place as they went.

Serial renovators with a simple-living mindset

By the time Open House was published, Pays and Bernsen had already renovated well over twenty homes together and would eventually notch around thirty complete transformations. Their projects range from Los Angeles bungalows to a farmhouse in the south of France to a historic property in New York’s Hudson Valley. What ties them together isn’t a single aesthetic, but a shared philosophy: keep it simple, respect the bones of the house, reuse what you can, and spend where it actually matters.

Rather than treating each remodel as a one-off, the couple has refined a toolkit of repeatable strategiesneutral palettes, vintage furniture, durable materials, and smart space planningthat show up again and again in their work and in the pages of the book.

What the Open House book is really about

The subtitle, “Reinventing Space for Simple Living”, is the best summary of the book’s mission. This isn’t about chasing trends; it’s about reshaping existing homes so they function better, feel calmer, and cost less to maintain.

Transforming older homes into light-filled spaces

Many of the homes in Open House start out dark and chopped up, with tiny rooms, low ceilings, and confusing traffic patterns. The book walks readers through how Pays and Bernsen strip away bad additions, open up key walls, and introduce more windows and doors to pull in natural light. You see examples of small living rooms turned into airy, multipurpose spaces simply by aligning openings, raising door heights, or adding French doors to a courtyard or garden.

They also show how to borrow light from one area to anotherusing interior windows, glass partitions, or open shelving instead of solid walls. It’s a smart reminder that you don’t always need a full-scale addition; sometimes you just need to let the light you already have travel farther.

Budget-savvy design: where to splurge and where to save

One of the most useful aspects of the book is its honesty about budget. The authors are very clear: you can’t splurge on everything and still call it “affordable.” Instead, they make a distinction between structure and surface spending:

• Splurge on structure and function: rewiring unsafe electrical, fixing leaks, adding insulation, moving a poorly placed door, or creating a more rational kitchen layout.
• Save on finishes and furnishings: by using painted floors instead of new hardwood, sourcing vintage tables and chairs, relying on stock cabinets dressed up with good hardware, and hunting down discounted appliances.

The book offers dozens of small, repeatable ideas: using concrete for kitchen counters and islands, painting outdated floor tiles instead of replacing them, and shopping flea markets and salvage yards for light fixtures, sinks, and tables that bring character for a fraction of showroom prices.

Designing for real family life

Because Pays and Bernsen raised four sons while doing many of these projects, their spaces are built for real life, not photo shoots. You see mudrooms with durable tile, wide plank floors that actually look better a little worn, and slipcovered sofas that can survive kids, dogs, and movie nights.

They favor neutral, layered color schemeslots of whites, grays, and natural woodwith texture coming from linen, wool, woven baskets, and vintage textiles. The result is a style that feels high-end in photos but is surprisingly low-maintenance in practice.

Affordable renovation lessons from Open House

So what can the average homeowner or renter steal from this book? Quite a lot. Here are some of the standout strategies that make renovations both stylish and attainable.

1. Restore, recycle, reuse

Before ripping anything out, Pays and Bernsen always ask, “What can we keep?” In many projects they restore original brick, beams, or floorboards that previous owners had hidden under drywall or carpet. They also reuse old doors, light fixtures, and even sinks, either from the same house or from salvage sources.

For a typical homeowner, that might mean sanding and painting existing cabinets instead of replacing them, refinishing wood floors, or turning an old workbench into a kitchen island. It’s cheaper, greener, and more interesting than starting from scratch.

2. Be thrifty without losing style

Their French farmhouse project, featured in the book, is a master class in thrifty choices that still look chic. Outdoor tables from flea markets, simple canvas tents for overflow guests, and decomposed granite for pathways all prove that “budget” doesn’t have to mean “boring.”

At home, you can follow the same logic: shop secondhand for solid wood pieces, use drop cloths as curtain fabric, or combine affordable big-box lighting with one or two special vintage fixtures for personality.

3. Choose materials that can take a beating

Instead of delicate surfaces, the couple leans on hardwearing materials: concrete counters, painted wood floors, ceramic tiles, and simple plaster or white-painted walls. These finishes age gracefully and don’t demand a professional cleaning crew to stay presentable.

If you tend to be hard on your homekids, pets, lots of entertainingthink about durability first, trendiness second. That mindset alone can save you from expensive mistakes.

4. Stick to a cohesive palette

One of the easiest ways to make a house look “designed” is to limit your color palette. Pays often chooses three or four core colors for each projectusually whites and soft graysthen repeats them inside and out. The result is calm, connected spaces even when the furniture is a mix of flea-market finds and hand-me-downs.

For your own home, try picking a small set of neutrals and sticking to them for walls, trim, and big furniture pieces. You can still have fun with art, pillows, and rugs, but the overall look will feel intentional rather than chaotic.

5. Make every inch work

In many of their renovations, you’ll see clever uses of “dead” space: shelving tucked above doors, built-in storage under eaves, and seating nooks carved out of awkward corners. This approach is especially helpful in older homes where closets are tiny and hallways are oddly shaped.

Walk through your own place with a fresh eye and ask: where could a simple shelf, bench, or cabinet add real function? Often, a small built-in can have a bigger day-to-day impact than an expensive new sofa.

Who will love the Open House book?

While design enthusiasts will happily keep this on the coffee table, Open House is especially helpful for a few specific groups:

• First-time renovators who need a realistic sense of how to prioritize and how far a budget can stretch.
• Serial movers or flippers looking for a consistent design language they can apply from house to house.
• Owners of older homes who want to modernize without erasing the character that made them fall in love with the house in the first place.
• Visual learners who need photos, floor plans, and real-world examples rather than abstract design theory.

If you’re the kind of person who dog-ears magazine pages, pins every neutral kitchen you see on Pinterest, and still wonders how to translate that into your own space, this book is a friendly, practical bridge between inspiration and action.

Using Open House as a renovation roadmap

You don’t have to follow every idea in the book to benefit from it. Here’s one way to turn its pages into a step-by-step renovation plan:

1. Audit your house with fresh eyes. Walk each room and note what actually bothers you: Is it the lack of light? The traffic flow? Not enough storage? Or just dated finishes?
2. Identify structural versus cosmetic fixes. Inspired by the book, put safety and function firstmoving a bad doorway, opening a key wall, adding insulationbefore worrying about the perfect pendant light.
3. Create a mood board with restraint. Using images from Open House, pick out recurring themes: simple materials, neutral palettes, lots of natural textures. Let those guide your choices instead of chasing every trend on social media.
4. Phase your project. Pays and Bernsen didn’t transform every house overnight. They tackled renovations in stages, often living in the space while they worked. Break your own project into realistic phasesmaybe “open up the kitchen and add light” now, “upgrade finishes” later.
5. Borrow specific tricks. Copy one or two ideas directly: painted tile floors instead of new ones, canvas curtains on plumbing pipe rods, or concrete counters paired with budget cabinets.

By treating the book as a toolkit rather than a rulebook, you can adapt its ideas to a city apartment, a small bungalow, or a sprawling farmhouse alike.

Conclusion: real-life experiences with the Open House approach

To understand how powerful the Open House philosophy can be, imagine a very ordinary scenario: a family of four buys a tired 1950s bungalow. The rooms are small, the kitchen is cut off from the rest of the house, the hardwood floors are scratched, and the previous owners were clearly in a committed relationship with beige wall-to-wall carpet.

They pick up Pays and Bernsen’s book almost by accidentdrawn in by the soft gray sofas and sunlit rooms on the coverand start flipping through it over coffee. Instead of seeing giant additions and six-figure budgets, they see before-and-afters that feel surprisingly achievable: wall openings carefully placed to line up views, painted floors that look charming instead of “temporary,” and budget-friendly kitchens with concrete counters and simple open shelving.

The first weekend, inspired by the book, they move all the furniture away from the windows, pull down heavy drapes, and give every wall a fresh coat of white paint. Suddenly, the small rooms feel a little bigger and lighter. They realize they don’t actually need to blow out the back of the house; they just need better circulation and more light.

Next, they take a page from the couple’s budget philosophy. Instead of rushing into trendy finishes, they focus their savings on one big structural move: opening a section of wall between the kitchen and dining room to create a wide pass-through with a bar. It’s not a full “open concept” demolition, but it completely changes how the family uses the space. Now the person cooking can talk with guests or watch homework happening at the table.

When the budget gets tight (and it always does), they turn to some of the book’s thrifty tricks. They hunt flea markets for a farm table and mismatched chairs instead of buying a matching set. They paint the scratched hardwood floors a soft gray instead of paying to refinish them. They hang simple canvas panels as curtains on DIY plumbing-pipe rods. None of it is fancy, but together it feels incredibly pulled-togetherrelaxed, lived-in, and honest.

Over time, they find themselves thinking the way Pays and Bernsen describe in their stories: as “stewards” of the house rather than owners briefly passing through. They keep original built-ins, patch old trim instead of replacing it, and look for ways to reveal the home’s character instead of covering it up. Friends start asking, “Who’s your designer?” and they laugh, pointing to the now-well-thumbed copy of Open House on the coffee table.

Most importantly, the house begins to support their actual life. There’s a durable mudroom area with hooks and baskets by the back door. The kitchen is bright enough for Sunday pancakes and late-night tea. The living room feels cozy, not cluttered, thanks to a consistent palette and a mix of vintage textiles. Nothing is too precious; everything invites use.

That’s ultimately the gift of Open House: Reinventing Space for Simple Living. It doesn’t just show beautiful rooms; it shows a way of thinking about homes that combines affordability, style, and everyday practicality. Whether you’re planning a full-scale remodel or just trying to make a rental feel like your own, the book proves that good design isn’t about spending the most moneyit’s about seeing the potential that’s already there and having the courage to reinvent it.

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