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Living Room Makeover - The Plans

Posted on 26th October 2019

For those of you that follow me on Instagram, you’ll have seen me discussing my living room makeover that’s due to start in a few weeks. We are making a small structural change and knocking through the wall between the dining room and the living room. Our kitchen and dining room is one big open space and is therefore very sociable and our main entertaining space. The living room however is a bit too closed off and I feel like the flow of the house is wrong, because, well, it doesn’t flow. By opening up this wall, the kitchen, dining room and living room will feel more like one big space and will stop the living room feeling so secluded. 

My one (small) issue with opening up these spaces and joining them together, is that I don’t feel like the current decor in each room works well together. Here are some pictures of how each of the rooms currently look. As you can see, the dining room is a bit more modern and industrial with a concrete dining table, industrial style pendant lights, and a very dark feature wall which is Farrow and Ball Down Pipe, and bright, off white walls.

The living room on the other hand is a much warmer coloured room, with a more creamy colour wall (Farrow and Ball Shadow White), green accents and a few more traditional touches. I love them both separately, but I can't help but feel like they clash. Not only that, I think my style is changing and I'm preferring the more contrasting look by including more white in my decor.

What’s a girl to do when this issue occurs? Redecorate of course! Josh may not be best pleased with me for this decision, but in my defence we have always planned to knock through the wall so the living room was never properly decorated in the way I wanted it to be. However, I have to admit I didn’t think ahead enough when decorating these rooms and how they might look when opened up. The dining room is my favourite room in the house, I feel the style and colours work so well together, so we have decided to change the living room to make the decor more in keeping with that style.

On a recent visit to my local Neptune store, I fell in love with their new season colour, Ink. It is a really dark blue black colour, and paired with an off white, it just looked beautiful, bold and modern. Luckily Josh loved it too, so this colour has been the inspiration for the new look in the living room. Here are some images from Neptune:

I bought a few paint testers from Neptune to try out in the living room, and also ordered some from Little Greene. The colours are:

  • Neptune - Ink
  • Neptune - Shell
  • Neptune - Lily
  • Little Greene - Basalt
  • Little Greene - Slaked Lime
  • Little Greene - Shirting

By using this colour scheme, we are hopefully going to be able to keep our existing sofa too, which would be very helpful and by taking out the corner section and joining together the two end pieces, it feels likes a completely new sofa. 

Then of course there is the question of the doors, which is why all of these changes are happening in the first place. Some have asked why we need doors at all and why we don’t just keep it open, but the kitchen is where we keep the cats when we are out during the day or on holiday, and I don’t want them being able to roam. I also don’t want cooking smells to get into the sofa and carpet, so it has to have the option of being closed off. After going backwards and forwards between several ideas, I think we have finally (nearly, maybe) settled on Crittall style doors. The Crittall style looks modern and industrial which will work really well with the new and existing decor, and having glass doors will allow so much light to flood through between the two rooms. Here are some examples of doors we have seen and like so far, so you can get an idea of what we want.

So that is a bit of an overview for you of our living room plans. I didn’t want to just share the end result with you, as I know you all love a project and DIY and seeing the process! The building work is starting in just over a week, so I will keep you regularly updated on Instagram! If you have any questions about this makeover, please feel free to ask in the comments below.

Karly x

Comments:

  1. Love love love yours ideas and the doors so beautiful (if a door can be beautiful) it’s going to look amazing can’t wait to see it finished.

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Hello!

Thanks for stopping by! I'm Karly Louise and I run an affordable interiors, fashion and lifestyle blog. I'm also the founder of Cloud Interiors - an interior design and styling company based near Reading, Berkshire.

Follow @karlylouise_x on instagram for updates!

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Reading based interior design company specialising in residential design for private clients across Berkshire and surrounding areas.
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