Let's be honest, though -- how often does a 5YM-era book really go into detail about the set design? "Kirk checked his reflection in the small hexagonal mirror above the dresser which rotated out of the wall, then moved past the vertical metal grille and trapezoidal wall hanging to activate the boxy viewing screen on the also-trapezoidal desk that extended out next to his bronze lame-covered bed"? Generally the scenery descriptions are a lot vaguer. "Kirk walked across his quarters and activated his desktop viewer." That's all you need. A scene is set on the bridge, or in the briefing room, or in sickbay, or in the corridor, or whatever. The only more specific details that tend to get mentioned are plot-relevant ones, or just generalized descriptions to convey the feel of the setting -- the red-lit bridge at high alert, the inviting quarters of a friendly crew member, the vast and bustling engineering complex. You might get a bit more detail in a movie-era book to specifically differentiate it for the benefit of readers whose mental default is the 5YM -- the multistory engine complex illuminated by the swirling energies in the vertical cylinder of the intermix chamber, the spacious rec room with its array of large windows on the rear wall, that sort of thing -- but you can get the broad strokes of that just from movie screencaps. And most settings in the TMP era are similar enough to their TOS equivalents that the action would play out the same way regardless. A corridor is a corridor. A turbolift is a turbolift. Heck, a lot of TMP-era novels have had briefing-room scenes even though we never, ever saw a movie-era briefing room onscreen.
Granted, I have written books that incorporated more exact set details, specifically for the TMP Enterprise in Ex Machina and the TOS/TAS ship in Forgotten History, and I did consult extensive references to get the technical details. I've also done so for Starfleet and Andorian ships in Rise of the Federation, consulting all the tech references and screencaps I could find. But I did it in those books because I specifically wanted to give a strong feel for those particular eras. If anything, more generally, I have a bad habit of not putting in much scenery description at all, and sometimes not even remembering to establish where a scene is set -- I just have two or three people talking in what could be an empty void for all the description I offer. (I was surprised when the makers of the audiobook version of my novel Only Superhuman used the background ambience of a restaurant for a lunch scene I'd assumed was in a private home. I'd forgotten to include that detail in the actual text.) Usually the best approach is somewhere between those extremes -- give just enough information to provide a general impression of the setting but no more than is necessary to support the dialogue, action, and tone of a scene.
