A few weeks ago, I traveled to San Francisco to visit my friend, Tiffany. While the main goal of the trip was to spend some quality time together (and let's be honest, to eat some delicious food), another goal was to finish decorating Tiffany's home. It's a great space and in the past year, she has made lots of changes to her home decor.
This is how the living room looked when I arrived.
Just about everything you see above is new to her living room -- couch, chair, coffee table, side table and rug. We both really like the furniture choices she already made but the room wasn't feeling all pulled together and finished yet so that was the project we were going to tackle together.
The first thing I wanted to do was open the room up a bit. The thin console behind the couch was moved to another room and the couch and chair were pushed back so that the rug floated in the space. The side table (a little tough to see but it's in both photos, under the lamp) was repositioned on an angle and the big, bulky table lamp was removed.
Here's where we landed after the first night. Please don't mind the sleeping husband in the photo -- decorating a home can be exhausting.
Everything is spread out now, open and airy. Paired down, too. Mail and magazines went in the basket on the side table with a Penn State Nittany Lion as a paper weight. We needed some height so we were going to look for a floor lamp that would make the open space between the couch and side table look intentional. Our new floor plan left a bunch of "unused" space behind the side table but I think that's okay. Tiffany has a long living room and pushing her side table into the corner to use up that space was just feeling awkward and forced. The interesting thing was that once we removed the big table lamp and repositioned the furniture, we realized that the large white panel door that leads to the water heater could actually work as a place to hang art. What was once an area that she was trying to hide was now going to become a place to add color and warmth to the space.
We found exactly what we were looking for at Target the next day. The photos aren't great, but you get the idea.
A trip to Home Goods helped with some other details in the room, too, such as a basket for throws and the pillow on the brown chair above. If you look at the before photos at the top of the post, you'll see that although the couch has a brown stripe to match the brown chair, the two pieces were contrasting too much. They needed some pillows to unify them together. To bring out the stripe in the couch, we added some solid brown pillows. The chair got a punch with a graphic pillow. It works because the geometric pattern is a subtle nod to the ticking fabric on the couch and the little bits of green match the green on the rug perfectly.
The kitchen area was spruced up a bit by clearing the countertops of as much as possible and by corralling items in white bowls.
All that is left to do in the kitchen is to address the empty space to the left of the kitchen sink. It's a narrow space but I think a small piece of art or a framed mirror would work well here. I know that a mirror in a kitchen is an unorthodox choice but here's why I like it -- it would bring light into the space making it seem more airy and the mirror's reflection would act as artwork. I read somewhere that's it's important to consider what a mirror will reflect before you hang it. It's totally true. A pretty mirror is great on its own, but one that reflects the stunning hills and valleys of San Francisco? Perfect.
It was so much fun watching this space pull together. Later this week I'll show you more. Still to come is the other part of Tiffany's living room and her bedroom. Lots more goodness coming soon!
*****
couch from Pottery Barn
chair from Macy's
rug from Target
floor lamp (similar to shown) and artwork from Target
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