Living-room tour

Welcome back to yet another article of Architectural Digest… If only! One thing I have noticed when reading interior magazines is that each house has a wow factor if designed well. In some cases it may be a grand entrance, in others, it may be a designer kitchen, and in our case, it is our living-room.

Space is a real luxury in London, so when we were looking to buy we knew our desire for space would mean compromising elsewhere. When visiting our now home, we noticed that bedrooms were on the smaller side, the bathrooms were awfully beige and that the garden was more of a courtyard. However, we knew we could compromise on all this when we entered the living-room.

***Warning low definition estate agent pictures ahead*** The before of this room was fine, it was stage by the developer and they weirdly had closed the space by having the sofa showing their backs to the rest of the room. As Andrew would say: ” there is not much feng shui there!”. The proportions of some items were completely off and some of the choices of furniture were questionable. I mean, those curtains… Why?

All that was thankfully going and I was so ready to decorate this big clean slate.

As I mentioned in the kitchen and dining room tours, our house in an upside down house which means our living space is upstairs and it is a fully open plan room with double-height ceilings. Not bad for London!

Welcome to the area we hang out the most in. We are in our living-room about 80% of the time, and if not we are usually sat at the dining table (where I am currently typing these words) or one of us is preparing food in the kitchen.

I would describe my interior style as modern-eclectic. I love contemporary furniture and architecture, but I always try to balance it with classical design pieces, travel finds and family heirlooms. And no room showcases this better than our living-room.

The space is clean, modern and off white. The sofas are mid-century inspired. There are trinkets, different textures and touches of colours across the room.

Let’s start the tour from right to left. Behind our sofa is an Ikea sideboard (old) with various objects I gathered other the years, a sixties-inspired lamp from M&S and school maps of France and the UK. I explained how I styled this corner in detail here.

Our sofas are from French Connection at DFS. We have a 3 seater and a cuddler chair in the Charcoal Combination. We got them almost three years ago and I still love the design. They have aged pretty well but there are a few stains here and there and the sitting cushions have a tendency to slide off.

I styled them with mismatched cushions found in TK Maxx, Next Home and French Connection. The teal and mustard/pistachio tie in nicely with the edge of our Ikea rug (old).

Separating the two sofas is a small Ikea side table (old) where our remote controls live in a remote holder* my parents got us many years ago. On there you will also find some of our coffee table books, like this Map one* and poetry book* my dad got me for Christmas.

Above the cuddler chair is a very large print of Stair-Up by Henk Van Maastricht which I got on Juniqe.

Turning around to the left, this is where most of the interior design action is happening.

Our coffee table is yet again an old Ikea find, and on it are some of my favourite candles on a slice of wood which decorated one of our wedding tables.

I also created a little interior garden next to the TV. In a polluted city like London, it is always lovely to invite Mother Nature in. The planters were found at TK Maxx and Oliver Bonas.

The pièce de résistance of our living-room is probably our TV/ giant gallery wall. I went into details about the TV wall before, so I won’t bore you with these in this post.

I am rather proud of how it turned up. With a double-height room, I had so much wall space to play with and I didn’t want anything to look dwarfed. I think I did an okay job with the gallery wall climbing fairly high and a big Andy Warhol poster aligning with it in the reading corner.

Next, to the TV we have some additional seats. A beautiful teal velvet chair from Perch and Parrow and a Moroccan pouffe* found on Amazon. These are very useful when we have people around and they offer a nice transition into the reading corner.

What I call the reading corner could also be called the wine cellar or booze cabinet, to be honest. And if you are interested in any of the things you can see in the picture below, I talked into details about this area here.

Our living-room is by far one of the rooms I am the proudest of. I thoroughly enjoyed decorating it. Although there are still things I don’t find perfect, I think we did a good job of making this giant white cube a welcoming and relaxing space for everyone.

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