Client Project: Living Room Reveal

Last summer, I was hired to help a client redo his living room, bathroom, and bedroom.  If you remember that long ago, you may remember I showed you guys some pictures of the progress we were making.  Well, the project has been done for a few months now, so I figured it was about time I showed you all the finished product.  I'm just going to show the living room today to avoid having a SUPER long post, but here's a spoiler alert: if you follow me on Facebook, you can see all of the completed rooms.

As I've mentioned before, this room was quite a challenge for me.  You all probably know (and if you follow me on Pinterest you definitely do) but my preferred design style consists of a lot of soft, gentle colors.  And well, as you can see, red + yellow aren't exactly soft and subtle.  My original thoughts were to paint everything gray, but then I learned my client wanted to keep the walls the colors they were.  

As much as the red and yellow may not be my style, when it comes to designing a client's house, my style isn't what matters.  What's important is what the client wants (after all, it's their house, not mine), so it's my job to create the best space I possibly can within the realm of what they want.  And guess what?  Over time, the red and yellow kind of grew on me.  I'm not saying you're going to see my whole house painted in these bold hues (sorry Noel), but I am really pleased with how everything turned out.  

This was the second inspiration board made for the space.  The original one can be seen here.

Because the walls were SO bold, when it came time to buy furniture for the space, I knew I wanted to keep everything VERY neutral to help balance out the bright.  Luckily, my client had KILLER taste in furniture, so we were able to purchase some amazing pieces for the space.  Are you guys ready to see the finished room?  Let me first remind you what we started with:

Because the two small walls on either end of the room were painted red, I decided to pull that in to a lot of the furnishings as an accent color.  This helps draw your eye around the room, making everything feel pulled together.  I also did want to bring in the red somewhere else because if the walls were ever painted over, the room would still have a pop of color.

Since I knew I wanted to bring red into the rug and curtains, I knew we'd have to do something to break up the red wall behind, or it would be red overload.  My client purchased an amazing custom buffet from room and board, and we had the contractor build the maple panel and stainless steel shelf that you see floating behind it.  

Over on the far wall closest to the entry, we decided to put a little console table and a beautiful piece of artwork that looks as if it were made for the space.

There's one other corner that was empty (here's the original picture) when I took all the photos, but since, we have ordered a desk to put there, as he wanted a small little area to put a little electric keyboard for his kids.  I'll be sure to snap a few pictures the next time I'm over there, but the desk sits tucked into the far corner.

So that pretty much wraps up the living room tour.  Over the next week or two I'll show you the remaining rooms, and talk about all of the fun we had redoing everything.   But for now, I'll leave you with one last before and after.