Living Room Luxury

I get asked questions about my design process all the time so I thought I would share with you how I go about designing a room! I decided to focus on the Living Room because it’s such an integral room of the home and the design is really important.

Step 1 in any design is to draw the room to scale and begin space planning. It’s important to consider how the room will be used - for instance is it mostly for entertaining, watching tv, hanging out with family, etc. The space plan of the living room should reflect how the room will be used. You’ll want to create balance and proportion with the furniture layout. This will be your road map for the entire design. It will let you know how many chairs/sofas/tables etc you will need and what their sizes are. It will show you where to place task lighting so you know how many table/floor lamps or fixed lighting you need to incorporate. It will tell you what size area rug works best. You cannot properly design a living room unless you do this very important first step!

The next step in designing a living room for me is the start of the fabric search! I love fabrics and in rooms, like the living room, there are so many opportunities to build your story board of textiles. Since we mostly specify custom upholstery, I typically don’t worry about styles until I get a good sense of the fabric story in the room. While I’m selecting fabrics, I still use my floor plan so I can see how each fabric will relate to the fabric next to it in the room. For instance, if I’m designing a green, blue and yellow living room, I want to make sure the room isn’t heavily saturated on one side with one color, I want to strategically balance the colors, and spread them throughout the room so they work harmoniously together.

Once my fabric story has been started, I turn to furniture selections. Again, I refer to the trusty floor plan. This will ensure that I am selecting pieces that will actually fit in the space! I won’t make a purchase where something is too big and doesn’t fit or looks ridiculously small in the room. I also like to envision the balance of materials and using the floor plan can help me see how each of the different woods, or stones, or textiles will relate and blend with everything else in relation to its placement in the living room.

Finally, after the main pieces are selected, we get down to the details… think of the room as a whole, so when the vision board is started with the main selections, you are making sure the walls are dressed to support the design, the floors appropriately compliment the design direction and even address the ceiling. So many people forget about the ceiling, but it can be just as important as the walls.

Make your selections for all of these surfaces and make sure the room is filled with the right accessories that fill in the negative space of the room and make it feel inviting. So pillows, lamps, rugs, art, window treatments and other home accessories are considered during this process. There are so many details to consider when designing a living room space. The higher level of the design, the more details are introduced into the space… There really is an art to the curation of designing a room but if you are looking to tackle this project yourself, I would advise you to approach it the same way a professional does.

1. Make sure you have your floor plan. (You can do this on grid paper if you want, and let each square represent 6” or 12”. Note where the doors are located, and windows, and other architectural features, and also consider your traffic flow patterns.

2. Once you begin curating your pieces upload those images onto a power point presentation so you will be able to see how each item relates to the other items you select for the room. This will give you a good idea if the design direction you wish to go will work together. I would have a pretty solid design direction before you start making purchases for your living room! This will help you to avoid costly mistakes, and assure you have a room that you will love for years to come!

I hope this helps you determine what you need to do and got some tips on how to do it!

Till next time!