This living room makeover is a little bit organic modern and a little bit transitional. It’s a room I designed and decorated at my mom’s house. Take a look…
When my mom moved into her current house there was a space that she didn’t know what to do with – the main living room. This area is the very first thing you see you when you walk in the front door, so while it was unused, it was very visible and pretty much the dead center of the home.
To say thanks for all that she has done for us, I wanted to gift her a room makeover. And this was the room I ended up doing. So, today I’m sharing the full room makeover.
Living Room Makeover Breakdown
We wanted it to not only look and feel great but also have function and really be a space that would get used by the family. My mom’s style is a little bit transitional and I gravitate towards earthy minimal vibes, so the final look falls into the organic modern living room category, in my eyes.
Now that the room is completely done I feel like this is the space I gravitate to whenever I go over there. It has big sliding doors that lead outside and truly feels more like the heart of the home now.
What did the room look like before?
As I mentioned, it was a mostly unused space. There is a separate den that is used as the main ‘tv room’, so this living room space could function solely as a seating and entertaining space. At move in, the walls were a powder blue color. Which was very quickly switched to a warm white – making a huge difference. After that, this room sat nearly empty for months. Just a chair and a few other things.
Here are the before photos – back when it was blue and then after it was painted, but before it was decorated…
Now that you have a better idea of where this room started, let’s jump into how the room came together. Starting with the rug…
Rug
I found this cozy neutral rug from Loloi (Brea rug in ivory) and immediately knew it would be a great fit for the space. The room is very large so we needed a pretty substantial rug to ground the seating area. This is a 9’3 x 12.
The lighter color helps break up the dark floors and the texture is really inviting. It’s soft on the feet and cozy too.
Furniture
The chairs and sofa are from Article. The Solna sofa is actually a pull out couch that converts to a bed whenever additional guests come into town, which is really nice for holidays especially, when we all get together. Chairs are no longer available, but these chairs are similar.
The coffee table is one of my favorite pieces in the entire room. You have to see it in person to really appreciate it, but it only has three legs and those legs are triangular in shape. Which adds some unexpected character / uniqueness. It’s a really beautiful wood too – making it a great spot for puzzles. The best price I’ve seen for it was at Scout & Nimble.
I brought in a black floor lamp from Article that feels a bit sculptural, to tie in other black accents – like the framed artwork, and medal legs of the sofa and chairs.The side table is from Target, which was a great budget friendly find.
Another piece that used to be ours that it gifted to my mom was this six drawer dresser. Using it as a sideboard / credenza has worked really well. It provides plenty of great storage.
Artwork
Artwork is one of those things that’s extremely personal, so I had my mom pick out the art pieces that she liked, for above the sofa. She found these at World Market and I thought they really fit the space well scale-wise.
The artwork above the credenza is something that I made for specifically for this living room. My mom found a huge piece of wall art from At Home that already had the frame for under $40. So I used that as the base to create a plaster art piece that was really simple.
Mirror + Accessories
After she picked out the artwork, I was able to use the colors from those pieces as a jumping off point for accessories, to help tie everything together.
My mom really wanted a mirror in the space. We decided to add it to the side that was opposite the sliding doors, so that we could bounce some more light into the darker areas of the space. Side note, this mirror used to be ours, but we weren’t using it and it fit really well in my mom’s home, so we gifted it to her. It’s from Blu Dot.
The pillows are from Loloi, Article, and Joybird. The pink pillows are from the Amber Lewis X Loloi collab – called the Onofre pillows. The circular pillows are Tussah Snow round pillows from Joybird. And the ivory square boucle pillows are from Article.
A few other accessories sources: woven seagrass baskets, large lemon bowl (old Amber Interiors), ivory round vase (similar), blue round vase (similar), paper mache bowl (similar).
Plants
From the very beginning, there was no doubt that this room would have some plants. My mom is a huge plant lover. We incorporated a couple of plants in here she already had, like the fiddle leaf fig.
And then I brought in a really tall dracaena plant for height and texture with the different leaves. One of the things I like most about dracaena , other than the way they look, is that they can survive in low or medium light.
And that’s everything! The finished living room feels somewhere in between my style and my mom’s. It was really fun to tackle a project for someone else again. Maybe I’ll do this more often? Hmmm.
Looking for even more room makeovers?
Here are a few of my favorite before and afters recently…
