Favorite Past Projects: Gorgeous Family Room Redo
I’ve run a luxury interior design firm for 12 years and during that time I’ve seen family after family thrill at the transformations we’ve designed for them in their homes. We get gasps, happy tears, giggles, and yes, hugs too. (I admit…I do like the hugs.)
Once again, IDH performed magic when it came to delivering a stunning custom interior design in a family room – livable luxury that couples and families love living in every day.
The Project & Choosing A Color Scheme
With children now in college or older, it was time for this mamma & papa to turn their home design into something all about them. They wanted restrained elegance, sophistication and comfort. We said, “OK!”
The room began here: Very sweet, traditional and looking a bit dated.
FAMILY ROOM BEFORE:
Bold yellows, greens, eggplant and floral prints all coordinated with a former adjoining kitchen and reflected a different time in the family’s lives: young children and different tastes.
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Family Room After:
Here’s the stunning family room transformation that is a perfect example of livable luxury: it’s at once refined and elegant, yet so comfortable and perfectly functional. It’s enjoyed daily for family relaxation (who wouldn’t relax in this beauty!) and when it comes to entertaining, guests easily spill into the ample, comfy seating while they bask in all of the great rhythms, textures and appointments in the room.
Choosing the Right Color Scheme:
In custom interior design, it’s not unusual for us to work on an entire home at once, or an entire first floor, or even multiple rooms in a home at once. HOWEVER, it’s also common for us to be asked to do custom design in 1 room at a time as exemplified in this project.
When providing interior design for one room at a time, it’s imperative to consider all of the adjoining spaces as well as the sight lines involved; those looking out beyond the room we’re designing, beyond as well the sight lines from other areas in the home looking into the room in question.
I will admit – here in my interior design firm, we are sticklers about these sight lines, as well as nodding to the architecture. All of this, along with a person’s design fingerprint, affects selecting the right color palette.
In this project, green is an important color that is established elsewhere in this home. Green also spills in through the garden views. We had to embrace this and are so glad we did! Here we twisted some green a little deeper with the marvelous emerald velvet chairs and again in the acid green accent pillows.
Yellow, still a family favorite, remained as a whisper on the now lighter walls, on the ottoman and some pale pillows.
Sand and Cream in this space are important through line colors to other areas of the home and by running them as we did in this room, the home in total feels larger and more harmonious. All strategic.
The magic in the room, an unexpected note, comes in the black and white exploration.
Black and white banding marches through the space on the window treatments’ leading edges. The over sized painting is black and white, and the art displayed on the large wall anchors that wall.
Black and white drifted into the striped pillows on the velvet chairs, leapt onto the window seat pillows and curled right onto the caned chairs that sit by a family heirloom game table.
The result is a relaxed, elegant, conservatory feeling with calming colors for restorative time, and controlled jolts of striking black and white color placements that add a Parisian “wink” and restrained sophistication.
Color schemes are not afterthoughts or best guesses. They are highly strategic. What do you want to feel in the room? What is your design fingerprint? What is the rest of the house requiring with its existing décor? Are you slowly changing your home’s direction?
These are just a few of the questions that we don’t just bring answers to. Here at IDH we bring beautiful solutions – design solutions that create the interiors you can’t wait to come home to. This is the music we make at IDH.
Care to dance?
Call the design studio. We’d love to discuss your latest design project with you so we can guide you graciously and delightfully across the finish line to your most beautiful home. Our office number is 215-736-8693.