One of my favourite colour combinations has to be dark green and gold. I love the richness of these colours and always dreamed of having Dark Jade bridesmaids’ dresses with gold accessories for my wedding (that was until I met Mr B and we had a shotgun wedding 4 months later in a Gin Distillery with no bridesmaids and plenty of Gin, but that’s another story!)

A very autumnal looking living room – this was taken in October, obviously! 🙂

The yellow living room

Let’s go back to the Living Room beginning shall we? When we moved into our house, the Living Room was a bright yellow, with green and white curtains and wooden furniture. I get why they decided on the yellow, it brought out the colour in the Sunflowers on the tile surround of the fireplace, but it was just a bit much for me.

Also, the walls were crumbling and had holes in it, so we had to get the room replastered and start again. Our builders did a superb job and when they finished replastering, they asked what colour we wanted it painted and immediately I said white.

I had literally whitewashed my whole house without a spot of colour in there and that was how I was going to keep it. I think I was a little afraid of colour at this point, until one day I saw this photo on Instagram…

My obsession with green begins

At this point in my life, I didn’t know how much I loved the colour Emerald or Jade green and suddenly I became obsessed with it. I had already found a mid-century chest of drawers in a charity shop for £25 which we were using as a TV unit and I knew they’d look perfect together.

Buying the paint, not an easy decision!

The hardest part was trying to find the right colour green for the living room and boy! I didn’t know how many green paint choices that were out there. I wanted something that was deep and rich and was a good contrast to my furniture. In the end, it took me nearly 6 months to choose the paint and I went with Blue Jade by Valspar.

I was also torn between painting an accent wall and painting the whole room. Our living room is west facing, but is always quite dark as we have tall trees and bushes in the front garden blocking out a lot of light so I decided to go with an accent wall to begin with and see how we got on with it.

Once I had finished painting the accent wall, I knew that I didn’t need to paint the whole room, but to add splashes of green and gold throughout bringing the whole room together. The first thing we had to decide on, was what rug to use on the floor. The trend at the time was the infamous monochrome “La Redoute Rug” and I purchased this in the sale which fitted in perfectly with the green wall.

Now for the furniture

Next, I needed to decide what furniture to use in the living room that went with the green wall and walnut TV unit. I was really drawn to the industrial style shelving units and coffee tables so we bought some shelves from Maisons Du Monde and the parquet style coffee table from La Redoute.

I needed to hang something above the fireplace and I’ve always liked mirrors in the living room, especially when it’s quite a dark space like this room, as it reflects more light. I found our nonagon mirror in a charity shop for £3 and spray painted it gold.

Creating a gallery wall

I think I knew when I painted the green wall that I would probably keep it as an accent wall as it was such a rich colour, but I had to decide what to do with the wall opposite. I’ve always loved gallery walls so I found different pieces of art that picked out the colours of the room, mainly green, gold and yellow and tried to not make it too over curated.

I also found a few monochrome prints as I liked how this tied the La Redoute rug into the gallery scheme. I was also lucky enough to find some cushions from Fox & Ivy at Tesco to match the green wall perfectly, tying in the soft furnishings on my old brown sofa. If you would like to create your own gallery wall, see my tips here.

And finally, the green velvet sofa arrives.

I always knew we would eventually replace the sofa as it was too brown, bulky and looked ridiculous as two separate pieces, so I was very lucky when sofa.com offered me a new sofa. Without a second thought, I ordered a green velvet sofa as this would be the icing on the dark green living room cake and was extremely happy when it turned up. It really did pull the whole room together and looked fabulous with the gallery wall.

Dark green also looks amazing against wood, be that wood flooring, furniture or doors and I couldn’t decide whether to keep the monochrome rug or the bare wooden floors (the rug won out eventually, especially in winter! I love wooden floors, but they do make a room feel cold).

The last addition, the bar cart.

One of the last additions to the room was a gold bar cart that I found in a charity shop for £15. I upcycled it with tropical wallpaper from Wilko’s and found a few gold candles and ornaments which provided a good contrast against the green wall. I then added some botanical and floral prints above the bar cart, plenty of plants and the important stuff, alcohol!

No longer did I have to leave my velvet sofa to get a top up, I could just wheel the trolley over to me and never have it more than an arm’s length away! Chin chin.

So, there you have it, a very long-winded description on how to use green in your living room! I still think painting this wall dark green is one of the best decisions I’ve made since we’ve renovated our house. “What colour and make is that green?” is probably the most asked question I get on Instagram so I thought I’d write a post on it. Hope you took some inspiration away from this post!

Update

Our living room has had many changes over the last year and now I’m finally happy with the way it looks! Rug by Dunelm.

Mel x