One of our readers, Stephanie, contacted us about getting some help with her living room. For the last three years, stephanie’s been wanting to fix up her living room, but just doesn’t know where to start.
Here are some shots of the space as it currently looks:
She’s been struggling with furniture layout, what to do with her windows and how to address the corner fire place. Stephanie’s direction to us was that she wants:
- A warm, comfortable space for entertaining, but also family-friendly
- To create privacy
- A neutral color palette
- A room that is kind of traditional, but has clean lines
So, as always, our first step is to look for inspiration. Based on Stephanie’s taste, we know we want to go with a more transitional room–what we call new traditional. This is a mix of traditional elements and contemporary lines. Unlike many rooms where the fireplace can be the natural focal point, this room just doesn’t allow for that. Instead, we think it makes sense to make the front windows the room’s focus.
1. We’d start with a simple, clean-lined sofa against the large front window. We’d then do full drapes across the window and add linen sheers for privacy.
2. Next, we’d recommend covering both of Stephanie’s windows exactly the same (again with the linen sheers in addition to a plain drape. She should definitely hang the drapery high as they’ve done in this inspiration shot.
3. We also love the use of a more traditional rug for Stephanie’s space–if we keep the furniture lines clean, we can go with a more traditional rug. The rug could then dictate the color palette of the room–Stephanie really likes brown, beige, green and blue. This will make the room feel really grounded and will hide the traffic of three little kids!
4. We love the idea of doing a round table with a lamp on one side of the new sofa and a floor lamp on the other–this will make the space feel less “stuffy” and give it more of a collected feel.
5. These barrel back chairs are the perfect juxtaposition to a square-armed sofa. We’d like to flank the sofa with two chairs–one barrel back and one modern wingback.
6. Because we’re recommending a streamlined sofa and barrel back chair, the room could use a little height. Bringing in a modern wingback will do just that. Like the barrel back chair, the curvature of this wing chair is a nice change from the straight arms of the sofa.
Check back tomorrow to see how we pulled all this inspiration together into a design board for Stephanie!
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