In This House: My Living Room

Jennifer McNamara
Jul 1, 2020
6 min read

Updated: Oct 21, 2020

Think of it this way, if you suddenly had to stay home in your living room for 4 straight months (and counting) you'd want to at least like the space right?

The Room Where You Live Your Life

One of the things I really love about homes is how obvious all the room names are. The bedroom, where the bed goes. The bathroom, where the bathing happens. The living room, where the living happens. Most of us do a whole lot of living in the living room. We watch tv, play, read, gather and share it with a whole lot of other people. In fact, the living room might be the second most important shared space in the whole house, after the kitchen of course.

The Room That You Share

Unless you live alone, you share this space with every other person in the house. Your partner, your parents, your children, your spouse or your roommates. And everybody needs to do their living in there. So who gets to design the space?

Now that you've had a mini crisis over fairness and your willingness to relinquish control, let me share a jolly tale of how my living room came to be the way it is today and my experience with fairness and design. Much of this particular blog post will resonate the most with those of you who have roommates, or possibly a very opinionated partner whose style differs from yours. The reason why the roommates situation is a bit different however, is that you are cramming all these items that are not truly shared into a shared space, and with them, your differing personalities.

Designing the Living Room

In my opinion, there are two methods here: one that sort of works and one that actually works.

Method One: Blend all your existing stuff together (why this only sort of works)

This is what we chose to do when we first moved into our lovely old house here in Kansas City. As fully grown adult women, we came equipped with a full living room between us. It included a large brown sectional that we were initially very excited about, who doesn't love a sectional! It also included a blue modern-looking armchair that made us less excited about the sectional because they didn't look very good together.

In an effort to make it all work, we purchased a cream colored shag rug that had a sort of bohemian diamond pattern in it. We figured a neutral color would at the very least not clash with the two already clashing pieces of furniture. And that right there, is why blending all your stuff together may never really work the way you want it to. You aren't coordinating things as much as you are minimizing the amount of clashing.

Please note the awful way that the couch blocks the fireplace and the bad color combo of the fireplace in general

Here's where the blending method went wrong for us:

The brown couch and blue chair never worked together
The cream colored rug became filthy (who is surprised)
I spent about 2 straight months in this room hating it more and more. Thanks quarantine.

Method Two: Start from scratch-ish

What I mean by this is that you need to start your design at the beginning. Don't just open up a box labeled "living room" and unload everything without being very intentional. Actually design the room on purpose. Think about colors and take things out that don't fit.

What made our redesign possible was I got permission to ditch the couch. This was crucial. It was never going to work in this space. The second thing that made all of this possible is that my roommate let me take control with her input. I ran everything by her and didn't move forward with anything unless we both liked it. When it comes to designing a shared space it is very important that everyone likes the final outcome. So whether thats giving control to one person and getting everyone else's sign off, or collectively designing each element together, find the process that works for you and get started!

My Process

There are four steps to my process:

Start with the facts or "must haves"
Finalize your aesthetic
Shop in your own house
Get some new things to tie it all together

Step 1: Start with the facts

Fact 1: We were keeping the blue armchair.

This means that whatever we did next, it had to work with blue.

Fact 2: We needed a new rug.

No one wanted to keep cleaning the white rug over and over. Getting a new rug was also the perfect opportunity to bring more blue into the room and commit to a main color for the space.

Fact 3: We needed a new couch.

The two main couch colors that I feel work with a blue chair are white and grey. You could do blue but that would be too much especially since we already got a blue rug. White is obviously gorgeous but no one truly wants a white couch because it’s just not practical, see white rug issue above. So grey it was! We scored an amazingly cheap barely used grey couch off Facebook Marketplace. Always shop the deals folks.

Fact 4: Our fireplace was ugly AF.

Grey was immediately our only option for the couch because we have a gigantic dark grey painted stone fireplace and we needed it to stop sticking out like a sore thumb. This very dark and artificial looking painted grey stone was paired with a deep red brick inside making the whole thing look absolutely terrible (see above). I got some white removable wallpaper and had my first foray into the realm of wallpapering. This was by far the best change we made in this room and I wish we did it as soon as we moved in.

Pro Tip: If you have something you can’t change in a room that you think is ugly, 1. Try really hard to change any part of it that you can, and 2. Embrace it as much as you can and tie it into the design so it sticks out less.

Step 2: Finalize your aesthetic

Once your focal pieces of furniture and main colors are picked out, commit to a theme or aesthetic for the rest of the smaller stuff. We went for a coastal, beachy theme because I am from southern California and we had been watching a lot of Hidden Potential with Jasmine Roth on HGTV at the time. She's big into coastal. We also have this white wicker ottoman that goes with the blue armchair so our options kind of felt like garden or beach and garden seemed a little grandma-y for us.

Step 3: Shop in your own home

Now you have your main furniture, colors and aesthetic. What else in the room still needs some decor? We're talking about things like mantels, decorative tables, bookcases etc. Typically these kinds of spaces can easily be dressed up with some pictures, vases and candles. You probably have some of those laying around the house already! A big thing here though is that they need to fit within your new theme.

Step 4: Get a couple of new things to tie it all together

If you can afford to, treat yo self to some new decor! A redesign should feel truly new after all. This is where I took the most creative liberty. I picked up a couple new lanterns, a tray and a new mirror to really drive home the coastal feeling.

Affordability Tips:

Bargain hunt for that furniture. There is so much cheap nice stuff out there that is gently used or can easily be fixed up a bit. Always look for second hand furniture before buying something new.
Shop in your own house. We all seriously own so much stuff. You would be surprised how new something can feel when you move it to a new space.
Removable wallpaper. This is the perfect solution for renters who aren't at liberty to tear out and redo things like ugly fireplaces. This is also a great way to create an accent wall or faux wainscoting for your living room as well!
Go for the biggest impact but fewest changes. If you have a tight budget for a redesign but you still want a big impact, change only one or two things but make them bigger changes. Things like accent walls, new paint, or a new layout can really make a big impact without costing a ton of money. Happy redesigning!