Your living room is often the most central part of your home. It’s a communal space for entertaining, hanging out, watching TV, and relaxing. Because it’s the most visible part of your home, it’s important to make sure it’s reflective of who you are. The following are 4 ways to make sure your living room reflects your personality.
1. Choose an emotion; how you want your space to make you and your guests feel. Welcome, relaxed, excited, inspired, elegant, these are all options to consider along with any other that moves you.
2. Select a focal point. Do you have an amazing view? Blur the line between inside and out and let the view take center stage. Do you have bold art? Balance your art with strong but non competing elements.
3. Work with what you have, eliminate what doesn’t fit with your new design aesthetic, and build from the elements that stay.
4. Personalize your space with custom pieces selected or created just for you. Custom selected rugs ground your living area and can be the focal point or the neutral foundation. Custom designed and made pillows, cocktail tables and window coverings can add just the right detail to unify and excite your living room.
Before: Our client purchased their condo fully furnished and decorated. While beautiful and sophisticated it just didn’t evoke the welcoming and warm feelings they wanted to go along with the elegance and modern design.
It’s hard not to notice that the large and colorful vintage posters are the focal point in this living room. All of the leather and neutral pallet with high contrasting black needed to be warmed up and grounded in rich but more neutral elements.
After: The glass coffee table was eliminated because, although stylish, it did not fit with the inviting feel our clients wanted to achieve and the corners of the glass were a hazard to their toddler grandchildren. The rest of the living room furniture stayed.
We personalized this living room with an anchoring rug in grayed blues to create cozy sophistication that grounds the living area and builds a bridge between the furnishings and art. Our cabinet maker built the solid oak cocktail table I custom designed to be both organic inviting and modern.
Simple lines and a driftwood color wash blends nicely with the other furnishings. We also designed the luxurious velvet pillows that add a wonderful texture, color and invitation to the sofa and chair. Throws in wools and faux fur round out the tactile additions and plants and flowers add life and further invite the outside in.
