Leann’s Living Room Inspiration

I luuuurve home decor…..I have nerded out on decorating shows since I was in elementary school. Remember Christopher Lowel back when mauve florals were the rage??!? So when my friend Leann asked me to get in on updating her living room…..I had to act cool as a cucumber, inside I was happy dancing! I literally ran home to make an ideas board. #nerdalert

When it comes to my own space, I can be crippled by the overwhelming number of directions one can go. One simple change is like the  book “When You Give a Mouse a Cookie”……Insert when you give Cassie a new sofa… she will want to paint the walls. When you paint the walls, she will want new curtains……You get my drift. Leann started her adventure excited and then she hit the paint isle…..Who knew there were eight million shades of gray or beige that quickly turned to rainbow colors once you left the paint store. I lived my whole life thinking gray was just plain gray until I tried to paint a wall gray…..It suddenly becomes blue, green, and sometimes even purple..

Sound familiar to anyone? 

One of the best tricks when selecting paint is to go to the darkest part of the swatches first. That dark color will show the undertones of a color more prominently. For Example look at the colors below. When you go all the way to the left on the swatch you can see some green, brown, purple, or even beige under tone to them. I still recommend samples. I encourage you to put samples throughout the room to see how the lighting in your house will change the color.  Leann even used poster board so she could easily tape them up around her house, and remove them until it is go time. Loooove this idea.

He house has some medium tone oak woodwork with neutral light beige carpet. She had just order this beautiful cream sofa set and paisley chair. Her space has beautiful vaulted ceilings with a warm fireplace centered in the middle. Flanking the fireplace are two huge windows with tons of natural light pouring in. She has a beautiful foundation. Now she just wanted to liven it up with some color. Below is the idea board for her room.

 

One of the tricks I learned in our last house was to treat wood tones like a color in your pallet. Some can be more red, others more yellow, hers was more towards a warm burnt orange.  In this case I picked the SW Saucy Gold to represent her wood tones. It really helps pull the whole room together. She wanted to keep the walls neutral towards the gray or beige tone. One of my favorite swatches from Sherwin Williams is this Mindful Gray one! I painted our last house and current house from this swatch. In my house it really looks more gray than beige, but I have seen it in other circumstances look beige. I liked the idea of some contrast from her light sofas. I found this inspiration rug, currently on sale for $99!! I built this inspiration board around the rug and artwork.

I love keeping the foundation of a room neutral. It makes it really easy and affordable to completely change a space up with a rug, artwork, and some throw pillows. If you like this idea board I have the links for all of the items plus a few more below, just click the images. The links are affiliated, but will not impact your pricing.

What is your favorite piece from this board? I am torn between that antiqued rug and the artwork!

Art

 Rug Options:

Accents: