The Living Room: One Room Challenge Week 2

Week 2 One Room Challenge: Formal Living Room

April 10, 2024

Spring 2024

One Room Challenge: week 2

(not so) Formal Living Room

Hello again! It's week number 2 of the Spring '24 One Room Challenge! Last week I gave you all the rundown of where I'm starting to transform my front room into a "not so formal" living room. This room, right off the entry, is not exactly the first impression of our home, but I want it to really speak not only to my personal style, but my husband's as well. This is the room where will will drink our morning coffee and welcome guests so I want it to be comfortable, warm and inviting.

Last week I shared the goal:

Create a bold, stylish, but still casual, living space to comfortably host family and friends by combining new, custom furnishings and treasured, collected pieces with our love of art.

and posted photos of the room as it was last week. This week, as promised, I'm sharing my INSPIRATION and DESIGN PLAN.

(In case you missed last week's post, you can find it HERE. As a reminder, this (below) is what the room looked like before. It has good space and light, but it's pretty bland and boring.)

One Room Challenge Spring 24_Living Room_Before — Living Room Before

The Process

When I'm working with a client, I usually insist on working through a pretty structured process:

1. Submittal of questionnaire and inspiration images
2. Concept approval
3. Sourcing furnishings and finishes
4. Design presentation and approval
5. Execution

However, since this is my own home and this is a relatively simple decorating job with no construction to be done, I let the process slide a bit. And, let me tell you, I've paid a price. The design is taking much longer than usual. DECISION FATIGUE IS REAL.

Because I'm my own worst client, I got a little lost in all of the possibilities for the design. So I stopped, took a breath and did exactly what I would ask a client to do if he or she was second-guessing the design direction: I went back and honed in on my inspiration images and was able to easily put my concept board together.

The Inspiration

ORC Spring '24 - One Room Challenge Week 2 Inspiration Images

In reviewing the images, four main concepts or elements really stood out to me:

1. the sense of warmth
2. the bold use of color
3. the use of large-scale art
4. the smidge of a retro vibe

The Concept Board

The Plan

As I mentioned above, this is a relatively simple decorating project with no construction to be done. Here's the rundown of how I plan to "build" the room:

The walls will be painted a neutral off-white
A large greige area rug in a retro/modern pattern will ground the room
Textured tone-on-tone draperies will be installed with custom hardware.
Large-scale art will act as a focal point
A custom sofa and twin swivel chairs will be combined with existing pieces of furniture
Additional art, lighting and accessories will be layered in finish the room

There is a lot to do in the coming weeks! Follow my progress here on the JPI blog and check out the other inspiring ORC designs.

Cheers,

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Julie

7 months ago

The artwork in your concept board is giving me all the feels! I hear you, for some reason, designing our own homes seems twice as difficult! Maybe as you said, because we know of all the possibilities! This room is going to be amazing!

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Jennifer

Reply to Julie

Thanks! I haven’t seen it yet, it’s in the warehouse. I have to admit I’m a little nervous because it’s pretty big and a bit out-of-scale for the room…intentionally, but still nerve-wrecking. We’ll see how it goes 🙂