It was summer of 2021 when we met with Frances and Bruce to discuss their living room makeover. The living room was a decent sized space open to the hallway on one side and to the dining room on the other. A well loved space presented as an arrangement of three small sofas and side tables, a piano and a wall occupied by a gas fireplace and very uncomplicated built-in cabinets flanking it on both sides. The piano used a big part of the wall leading to the dining room.
It was time to redecorate and a great opportunity to improve functionality and visual appeal of the space. The living room was the favourite place for the family to gather for a cup of tea, captivating book and heartfelt conversations.
List of our goals included
- improving lighting
- improving the layout and creating a better traffic flow
- creating sitting places for eight people
- making the room feel more spacious
- updating the space to reflect home owners’ tastes
Colour palette was inspired by the painting above the fireplace, a favourite of the family, with teal, rust and blue details. To improve the lighting, a bright flush mount light with a geometric grid replaced the old fan.
Further, the piano found a new home in another room and freed up precious space for traffic. Introducing a large sofa with swivel chairs on the opposite side, two pull up chairs in front of the fireplace and a gorgeous two-tone chair for the head of the family allowed us to create a very comfortable seating arrangement. Next, a custom-built grandchildren’s friendly coffee table extending to the width of the sofa offered a reachable surface for people around it.
We kept the existing gas fireplace and the tile around it and new deep teal built-ins and decorative moldings above the mantel made a very attractive focal point of the room.
Because the window needed a decorative touch and it was a Roman valance in the tones from our colour palette that made the cut.
A hand tufted wool area rug helped to ground the space and pretty table lamps with sculptural ceramic bases provided reading light.
I feel very grateful for the opportunity to have worked on this incredible transformation for a family who was brave to embrace the colour and wishing them many new happy memories in their exciting living room!
“We enjoyed the experience of working with Marina to reimagine and renovate our living room. Marina’s holistic concepts and design ideas set us on a strong direction. We appreciated Marina’s ability to listen and to reflect our ideas in the plan. Marina’s bold colour plan made the design particularly interesting and appealing.
The quality of the work produced by the subcontractors that Marina employed was excellent. There was clear communication on scheduling or plan alterations during the construction process.
We were very pleased with the final result. We appreciated Marina’s final touches with complimentary artwork and organization.”
~Bruce Smith and Frances Roberts, Ottawa