My Parents’ Living Room Reveal

I’m here today with my parents’ living room reveal and I can’t wait to show you all the pretty pics! This one was quick work. We had done all the hard work 8 years ago when we first designed their home. (You can read all about it here). We planned the layout in detail and selected every piece of furniture then.

The furniture is still beautiful and we didn’t need to change any of it now.

The fabrics were old and faded though, and the living room needed a coat of paint. So this makeover was about giving the living room a fresh new look and in my parents’ living room reveal, I’ll show you how we did that.

The Plan:

As you saw in the introductory post, we had planned a good layout for this space. It was cozy, yet well spread out, and demarcated different areas well. Over time, my parents juggled around the furniture a bit and that layout was somewhat lost.

So the first thing we did was rearranged the furniture back according to the original layout. This gives us the living area as you enter the home, the dining area on the far end, near the kitchen and a cozy sit out for two right near the window.

My Parents’ Living Room Reveal:

Once we had the layout sorted out, we started selecting our furnishings. The instructions given to me this time were very clear. They wanted a brighter, happier look. And me, being the ever obedient daughter (more so if I happen to agree! 🙂 ) followed the instructions to a T.

As always, I started the selection with the rug. Over time I’ve realised it’s way too difficult to select your colour scheme and furnishings, and then find a rug to match. It’s so much more easier to do it the other way around.

Once you have a rug you love, it’s easy enough to find fabric, cushions and accessories that will compliment that rug.

So I first shortlisted about half a dozen ‘colourful’ rugs and sent them to my parents to choose from. This gorgeous beauty is what they picked.

And I completely loved it too. With the reds, blues, yellows and oranges, it’s a riot of colours. Yet, the deep blue base makes a beautiful neutral and keeps it from going over the top.

The Living Area:

I know when you see this pic you’re imagining a wildly colourful living room as a whole. But, just like the rug, we didn’t go over the top either. We toned down the colours by using a white fabric for our largest piece of furniture, the 3-seater sofa.

We also went white with the wooden sofa set opposite this. But we did allow ourselves a little bit of pattern on that. After all, we were only trying to tone down the volume of the rug’s song.. not shut it up completely. We had to let the rug sing.

The blue and orange on this fabric are almost picked off directly from the rug.

Lastly, this single chair. It’s a classical, beautiful piece of furniture that I have loved ever since I saw it so many years ago. It was the perfect partner to our rug and we gave it a whole song of its own. The floral fabric on it adds to its charm and goes so wonderfully with the rug.

We added cushions on each of these pieces to compliment the fabric used on them. So while this piece got shades of orange, grey and blue, the large sofa got reds and blues to go with the rug and the single chair got a dark blue to go against the loud print on it.

And this is what our living area now looks like. Full of colour and pattern, yet not over the top.

The Dining Area:

Next, we moved on to the dining area. To keep the areas looking cohesive, the first thing I wanted to do was carry over the dark blue from the rug in to the dining area too. We did that by using this beautiful, customised wallpaper on our dining panel.

We then brought in the other colours of the rug.. the red and orange… with this striped fabric on the dining chairs.

Since mom paints herself, artwork is something I didn’t have to take care of here. She redid the painting on the left to go with the current colour scheme (see the before after pictures at the end to see what it looked like before) and painted a new one for the right side. The dancing lady in the centre looks perfect as is.

That completed the dining area, and this panel, lit up at night, is one of my favourite vignettes from their living room.

The Windows:

This living room has windows along its entire length of 20 feet and so the idea was to use them as best as we could.

We used white curtains, again with a light pattern. This lets in as much light in as possible and does not overdo the colour. The pattern keeps the entire expanse from being plain boring.

We moved the side board out near the window, where it stocks the dinnerware for the dining table.

And we got my favourite window chairs back where they belong. The trees growing outside my parents’ living room are at eye level and they have sparrows and parrots that come to feed from the bird house they have on their window railing.

This remains my favourite place to sit and share a cup of coffee with them, and I am so glad to have it back.

They already had this beautiful rug which fit in perfectly here in terms of size and colours. Since these chairs are away from the rest of the furniture, and against white curtains, we decided to go with a bold red print on these. I also think the red stands out superbly against the greens that make the backdrop.

The TV Wall:

The one thing we didn’t touch at all was the furniture on this wall. The showcases are beautiful and like I said earlier, we weren’t looking to change any of the furniture.

Before & After:

As usual, we’ve got some befores and afters to wrap up my parents’ living room reveal.

The dining wall, which is the first thing you see as you enter their home.

We arranged the furniture to get the dining table back in front of that panel and the sofas to make a cozy circle. The blue wallpaper on the panel and the paintings on either side are all bolder to go with the new bright and bold look.

We cleared the dining table away from the windows…

And put my favourite window chairs back next to it. We swapped the darker curtains for white ones to make the whole space brighter.

As you can see from this pair of pics, the furniture remains the same..

What has changed is the fabrics, cushions.. and the addition of a rug!

The living area went from being dark and barren…

To being light and bright with the change of fabric… and adding plants!

The only bit that didn’t change was the TV wall…

We only changed the furniture layout in front of it.

Get The Look:

As I’ve said all along, we haven’t got any new furniture for this makeover. But we do have new furnishings and accessories, and so here are some of them that we have used.

| – 1 – Red Ikasa Cushion Cover | – 2 – Navy Maroon Cushion Cover | – 3 – Coromandel Cushion Cover | – 4 – Grey & Orange Embroidered Cushion Cover | – 5 – Cement Planter | – 6 – Beaded Cushion Cover | – 7 – Navy Ikat Cushion Cover | – 8 – Multicolour Persian Carpet | – 9 – Florette Accent Table | 

Hope you’ve enjoyed my parents’ living room reveal and loved the riot of colours. I would love to know what you thought about it, so do write in the comments below.

We will be back with more design soon…

Until then,