Breathe New Life Into Your Space with Bold and Beautiful Accents
I don’t know about you, but there are times when I just can’t seem to shake the feeling that the home I have doesn’t quite match the home I long for. Life has a way of happening, and like most people, I simply don’t have the mental bandwidth or financial resources to constantly be thinking about the state of my home’s decor – until, that is, I find myself late at night, scrolling through Pinterest and wistfully wishing for change. But then morning arrives, and my baby’s diaper needs changing, the sheets on the bed could use a refresh, and the dirty dishes in the sink are calling my name. You know the drill!
This year, I’ve been hyper-aware of my decor restlessness, but I’ve also been mindful of our family’s goal to move to a new home in the next couple of years. That has made me reluctant to invest too much into changing up our current space. But then I decided, you know what? Let’s make a few updates that will make a big impact on how much we enjoy our home while we’re still here, even if it means delaying our moving timeline by a few months. No biggie, right?
Actually, it was a big biggie – because we are so happy with how relaxing and cohesive our home feels now, and I’m positively tickled pink (like, actual pink) that beneath my tootsies is a gorgeous pink shag rug that makes me smile every single day. No regrets!
Prioritizing Impact Over Cost
Revamping the decor in your space can feel pretty daunting, especially if it’s been a while since you’ve given it any real attention. So let’s talk about how I prioritized updates in our living room and how you can make a big impact without breaking the bank.
Keeping Down the Cost of Redecorating
If you have a lot of things you want to change about your space, it’s a good idea to think about breaking it up into two stages – one focused on the bones of the room, and the other on the decorative details. What I’m sharing with you today is actually part two of our living room refresh. The first part happened a couple of years ago when we bought a new sectional sofa and installed the built-in office behind it.
At the time, we didn’t focus too much on the decorative details because we simply couldn’t afford to. So a lot of what you see in the “before” photos was made up of second-hand and hand-me-down items that we liked well enough to use as placeholders until we could invest in the things we really wanted.
When you’re ready to turn your attention to all the decorative details in your space, the costs can certainly add up. Here are some suggestions that can help you save money:
Sell Your Stuff
Go through your home and get rid of anything you don’t love and don’t need. Determine what you could sell for a good price and list it on Craigslist, eBay, or your social media channels. I often start by posting something I’d like to sell on Facebook, and I usually get the asking price from a friend, without having to worry about shipping or dealing with a stranger coming to my house.
In addition to selling your nicer things, consider hosting a garage sale (invite friends to contribute and help out) to get rid of everything else. Anything that doesn’t sell, donate. You don’t want that stuff creeping back into your home and cramping your style. Believe me.
Slipcover Your Furniture
I had a love-hate relationship with our sofa for quite some time. It was perfect for the space, giving us the most seating and separating the office from the other side of the room. But I’ve never been a fan of how “Ikea” it looked (because, well, it’s from Ikea), and I’ve never loved the medium cool gray color.
Obviously, we weren’t in the market for a new sofa, but I was able to completely change the look of it with an Ikea replacement slipcover made specifically for the Karlstad sectional (which Ikea no longer makes). I got my slipcover from Comfort Works, a company that specializes in Ikea and Pottery Barn slipcovers, but they also make custom slipcovers. Slipcovers are so much more practical and environmentally responsible than buying new furniture for aesthetic reasons!
Host a Swap Party
My friends have had swap parties to get rid of clothes and accessories they no longer wear, but why not host a swap party for home goods? I know I’d love to shop my friends’ home accessories that they’re either tired of or no longer have room for in their own homes. So invite friends (preferably who share a similar style to you) to your home to bring some of the nicer things they’d like to get rid of, and swap with each other to get some new stuff for free.
Shop Secondhand
It’s easy to find a lot of stuff to love at your favorite home decorating stores, but it’s more fun (and thrilling) to find unique treasures secondhand. Plus, it’s usually so much less expensive. Mixing in secondhand or antique pieces is also a great way to build character into a space. If everything is new, it just seems to lack personality.
Think of the difference between a room pictured in a catalog versus a room in your favorite home decorating magazine. Most likely the spaces you prefer are filled with things that have been collected over time, which is why redecorating is a process and not usually an event.
Make a Wish List
I always feel so uncomfortable when family members ask me what I’d like for Christmas or my birthday. But some people really stress out about gift giving, and because of their practical personalities would really love to give you something they know you’ll use. The curtains in our home are actually Christmas gifts from family members who knew we wanted nice drapes but didn’t have the money to spend on them.
Simple Decor Changes That Make a Big Impact
As you can see, our living room serves so many purposes, and because of that, I wanted to focus the decor direction a bit to make it less eclectic and calmer. This space functions as our office, playroom, and sole living room. The only other rooms in our house are for bathing, sleeping, or eating. We have no den, basement, or “sitting room” to either exile our clutter to or escape from it.
We desired organization and a calm style for our living room, which led me towards more subtle and neutral items in this revamp. Everyone’s home is different, as is their personal style, but here are some objectives I focused on that I knew would make a big impact:
1. Consider a Cohesive Theme
In general, I don’t do “themes” in a room (such as a beach theme or even simply a color scheme), but I definitely needed to decide what direction this room was taking. Having a patterned rug, colorful pillows and furniture, and lots of busy artwork on the walls might work somewhere else, but it was making this room feel chaotic.
Narrowing down the colors in this space helped it feel calmer and more put-together. My desire for a calm and bright space, in addition to the small windows and our heavily wooded yard, led me to want mostly light-colored objects for the furniture and walls (including curtains). We have a desk that’s very visible, but it being all white helps it fade into the background, and lightening the sofa color made for less contrast, creating a more soothing view.
I decided I would use mostly light colors with a base of white, lots of neutrals, and accents of orange and dusty pink, without too much contrast in their varying shades. This decision to focus the colors and reduce contrast made such a huge impact in this space!
2. Reduce Visual Clutter
In addition to incorporating a more cohesive color scheme, I wanted to calm the space a bit more by decreasing some of the visual clutter. I thought the busy wall art, patterned rugs, wire-storage baskets, and gallery wall was all a bit too much for this space.
So I sold some things and moved others to different spaces in our home. I swapped out the gallery wall for more wall shelves, which in combination with the TV cabinet, created a media center and a much-needed visual anchor in the room. I kept these shelves looking pretty neutral by choosing to store light-colored books on this side of the room, and darker books on the other side.
Rather than selling or donating my old textbooks, I turned their spines to the wall and used them as decorative shelf-filler until my record collection grows vast enough to fill that entire shelf. I still have a bit of a gallery wall in this room, but it takes up much less space visually, and isn’t so busy with lots of color and pattern.
This mini gallery is a great space to display some of our family’s personality and also my kiddo’s art projects. I’m not opposed to gallery walls, but I am more drawn to large, oversized art for this room because it is helpful to anchor zones in the space, while multiple smaller pieces were adding to the disjointed feel that had bothered me about this space before.
And much like gallery walls, I love patterned rugs but just not in this room. A light, dusty pink rug still makes a statement, but anchors the seating area rather than adding to the visual clutter.
3. Incorporate Stylish Storage Solutions
Focusing the color scheme and style of your space certainly helps tone down the visual clutter, but we all have actual clutter too, right? Or maybe that’s just me. Nah, it’s totally just my kids.
Incorporating lots of nice-looking storage pieces was a high priority for this room. Our wall-mounted desk system is actually just a series of Ikea kitchen cabinets, so there’s plenty of storage on that wall. I also made this long storage cabinet to organize toys behind our sofa, which also acts as a sofa table for drinks and snacks.
The vintage sideboard that serves as the base of our media center holds the electronics and movies you might expect, but also extra blankets, extension cords and cables, and other household items in its drawers.
Another opportunity for me to reduce visual clutter was with what toys I allow into our living room. Just using the word “allow” might make you cringe, but if I’m going to put a play kitchen set and doll toys in our living room, I don’t want them to be neon-colored plastic monstrosities covered in garish stickers.
I was able to find these nice-looking wooden items at garage sales and antique malls and added an on-theme curtain to cover the baskets of food toys that are stored beneath the kitchen “sink”. Of course we also have plastic toys that beep and ding and are covered in stickers, but they don’t sit out all the time, and are kept neatly stored away in the cabinet behind the sofa.
I put more of an effort into the style and appearance of the larger toys that have become fixtures in our living room, and I think it makes such a big difference!
4. Incorporate Layers and Texture with Decorative Accents
I didn’t want a lot of color and contrast in this space, but I definitely didn’t want it to feel empty and cold. So I considered elements that would incorporate layers and texture to the room, warming it up and adding interest without adding clutter.
For me, that meant choosing decorative items that might be more neutral, but very textural in their material – such as my pink rug, which blends looped jute fibers with shaggy pink fibers, a beige throw blanket with rows of fringe, knit, linen, and furry pillows, and ivory knit poufs that not only add interest, but also additional seating.
Another way to add life and texture to a space is to add houseplants. I’ve always enjoyed taking care of houseplants in other rooms of my home, but because this room also functions as a play room, I had really been hesitant to keep them in here too. I’m so glad I decided to move so much greenery into our living room finally, because wow—what a difference it makes!
The girls have learned how to nicely touch the leaves and not dig in the dirt, and these plants really add a missing element of life and texture that this space needed.
Putting It All Together
As I kept all of these goals in mind, I did change very specific elements in the room, and figured it might be useful to list them all below:
- Painted the walls a moody gray color to create a soothing and calming backdrop.
- Painted the bookcases a saturated green shade to add depth and contrast.
- Reupholstered the sofa with a textured light gray fabric that complemented the new color scheme.
- Brought in fabrics in varying shades of green, black, and white to tie everything together.
- Rearranged the furniture layout to create more open flow and visual balance.
- Incorporated natural elements like a woven tray, wooden accents, and houseplants.
- Replaced the busy patterned rug with a soft, dusty pink option that anchored the seating area.
- Swapped out the gallery wall for a more curated, oversized piece of artwork.
- Organized and decluttered by selling, donating, or relocating items that didn’t fit the new aesthetic.
The itch for change and the creeping dissatisfaction with things can certainly be a slippery slope in my life. I do enjoy being in our home more now than I did before the living room revamp, but I really try to focus my brainpower on keeping the main thing the main thing—and that is the life that happens in these walls. (And I’m not just talking about my houseplants.)
As cheesy as my words may be to read, it’s so helpful to remember what’s important and what you’re grateful for when feelings of envy and discontentment come into your mind. Every day I remind myself of what I really treasure, and I gotta say, it’s not my coffee table… as rad as it might be.
ABC Home, your trusted building and renovation company in Aberdeen, UK, is here to help you achieve the home of your dreams, one refresh at a time. Contact us today to get started on transforming your tired rooms into vibrant, welcoming spaces!
