Our living room has seen quite a lot of changes since we first renovated. Finally, we exchanged on our house this week and I think the pop of our champagne corks could be heard up and down the country!

7 months since we initially put our offer in on our new house and lots of delays, people pulling out and nail-biting moments, we are finally at the moving house stage! And I’m ready to renovate and decorate all over again!

I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t think it would actually happen. We had started to look at other properties as we were at the point where we thought the chain would collapse, our house would have to go back on the market and the fabulous house on the beach that we had put an offer on would go to someone else.

But thankfully, luck (or perhaps sheer patience and perseverance) was on our side and we now have less than a week before we move. I should be packing boxes but oh no! I thought I would sit down and write a blog post about the question I get asked the most on Instagram, without a shadow of doubt. What colour and brand is my living room green wall?!?

 

Our Living Room Renovation

When we moved into our house, the lounge was painted a bright sunflower yellow. I have nothing against this colour and I could see why it was painted in such a full-on sunshine shade as the tiles around the fireplace had sunflower motifs. I just wasn’t keen on a living room painted in such a bright colour that is often used to energize and stimulate.

To me, a living room is a place to relax and unwind after a busy day of, well, life in general and we absolutely never have the “big light” on in this room.

To begin with, we had this room completely stripped. The floorboards were sanded down and varnished with Osmo Polyx Oil, the walls plastered and everything taken back to the bare minimum. When we moved in, we had an old large DFS corner sofa but it was facing the wrong way so we had to pull it apart and use it as two separate sofas. Not ideal, but after a huge renovation we had no money left to buy a new sofa(s).  

Deciding on a colour scheme

I desperately wanted to inject some colour into this room. In previous rooms we had been blessed with brick fireplaces or exposed brick walls so I had accumulated a lot of browns, reds and neutral colours for the living room to compliment the brickwork. However, I had found that I had fallen out of love with red.

Colour schemes for me have always evolved over time. It might be a piece of art that you have in your living room that can inspire a certain wall shade, or even something as simple as salt and pepper shakers. My previous kitchen was teal and white, inspired by some teal salt and pepper shakers I had bought on a whim in Asda.

Second Hand furniture to the rescue

We were out on a family walk and a house down the road from us was going through extensive renovations. In their skip they had put a beautiful old walnut cupboard with chequerboard style doors and I instantly fell in love with it. We dragged it out of the skip and took it home.

Our TV was on some Ikea units and I decided to put the walnut cupboard in the living room with the TV on top. It was only meant to be a temporary thing whilst I figured out what to do with it, but it has stayed there ever since. I then came across this picture on Instagram and a colour scheme started forming in my head….

Blue Jade by Valspar Paint UK

My next job was to find the perfect dark green to paint our living room. After several trips to B&Q and lots of tester pots, I finally settled on Blue Jade by Valspar. I loved the deep green/teal colour and how it changed in the light.

When I first started to paint the living room, I was a little alarmed. The paint was extremely dark and I wasn’t sure I was going to like it. After two coats and moving my furniture back into place, I realised it was the perfect colour. It envelopes you in cosiness in the evenings and during the day, it is such a vibrant green colour it is an absolute pleasure to look at.

Initially, I only painted one wall with Blue Jade. It is such a dark colour that I didn’t want to feel overwhelmed with it. I decided to create a feature wall at first to see if we liked it and maybe paint the other walls at a later date.

Choosing furniture for the living room

At this point I was using Instagram for all my inspiration and I had seen several people post pictures of their industrial style furniture. I like the stripped back look and neutral colours, how it uses raw materials and is extremely robust which is perfect for a busy living room! Especially as I was continuously telling my kids to get off the coffee table.

We went for the Staten Charcoal Grey Metal and Fir Industrial Shelf Unit from Maisons du Monde and the Nottingham Coffee Table in Metal & Pine from La Redoute.

The exciting part, Sofas!

We desperately needed to change our sofas and thankfully, through my work on Instagram, I was offered a collaboration with sofa.com. I knew immediately that I wanted a green velvet sofa as I had had my eye on one for a while. We decided to go with the Mabel (now discontinued) in Jade Smart Velvet as I loved the button back style of the sofa and the colour was perfectly matched with the Blue Jade paint.

Several months later, sofa.com asked if I wanted to collaborate again and after a visit to their showroom, I settled on the Izzy sofa in Orchid. Originally, I wanted to go with a mustard colour so it would compliment the sunflower tiles in our fireplace but I knew as soon as they paired the Orchid fabric with Jade, it was the perfect match.

I highly recommend going into a sofa showroom if you can, there is no substitute to seeing colours in the flesh and helping you decide on the right shades.

Comparing the colour schemes at the sofa.com show room. If you get the opportunity to go into a sofa showroom I highly recommend it!

What to put on the walls?

It’s no secret that I love a gallery wall. I had collected lots of artwork over the years and decided to have a go at creating a gallery wall over my green sofa. I wrote about how to create a gallery wall here. If you create a gallery with pictures you love, it will always work! I think everyone has a certain style and if you stick to what you know, don’t overthink it and choose a colour scheme, you can’t go wrong.

I wanted a single piece of artwork to go over the pink sofa as we had a gold charity shop purchase mirror hanging over the fireplace. Again, influenced by Instagram, I purchased this botanical grey wall hanging from Rose & Grey Interiors.

However, as my living room evolved and I added more pink, I realised the grey was no longer working in this room. I had been gifted an incredible Florabelle throw by Lucy Tiffney which was a real piece of art. I decided to get a bamboo stick and tie the throw to this and hang it up on our wall, replacing the grey wall hanging. The colours are perfect for this room.

The Rug Dilemma

The last addition to this room was the rug. I’ll be honest, I really struggled with a rug for this room. We have beautiful stripped floorboards in the living room but it was very cold underfoot so we definitely needed one. I have tried several different rugs in here, an Ikea geometric rug, an Aztec print rug (which got a lot of love but was too busy for me) and a traditional style rug from Next.

Finally, we settled on this Berber style rug from Dunelm (it is no longer available but this rug is very similar) and it really helped to lighten the room. However, I will definitely be replacing this rug when we move house as I have realised that white rugs and high traffic living rooms definitely do not mix!  

Completed!

Our living room is complete! Just in time to move house… 🙂 It is probably my favourite room in the house and I still love the green wall as much as the day I painted it. I decided not to paint the other walls in the same colour as blue jade, mainly because I actually quite like a feature wall (shhhhh don’t let anyone hear me say that! There’s been a backlash against feature walls recently) and I think with the green sofa on the opposite wall, there is enough green in this room.

The colours in our living room make me happy, it is welcoming and pleasing to the eye during the day and extremely cosy and comforting at night.

 

I have no doubt in my mind that I will probably go for exactly the same design in our new house!

Mel x