Good to Know: The Living Room
All Images by Lucy Call.
Over the past few months, we’ve talked about a lot of the various aspects of designing my home. We’ve covered designing my primary bedroom, my kitchen range, the process of designing custom upholstery, and we’ve listed every paint color in my home. For the full list of blog posts about my home, click here! Today, I wanted to talk about the process of designing my living room. This space is one of my favorites in the house, and I’m excited to share it with you.
When I was first conceptualizing what I wanted for this space, I thought about the landscape surrounding the home. Our house is built on a hill, so we have a great view of the foliage on the large trees at the back of our property. I wanted the space that we were building to capitalize on this view, and I worked with Clayton Vance Architecture to help this space feel a little like a treehouse. I love these windows and the natural light that they bring!
Natural light and a treehouse feel.
As you may have guessed, this is the space in my home where I plan to entertain more formally (once Covid is finally over). We have opted to not include a television in this room for this exact reason. There are other tv’s in the house where my kids can chill out, but this is not that place. We have also chosen to arrange the furniture in a “conversational format” where the sofas are facing each other, so that chatting will be easier once we can actually have guests gather. The two ottomans were also added with entertaining in mind. We love to use ottomans in our projects, because they provide additional seating space without all of the bulk of extra furniture.
In addition to seating, I have added sliding doors between the formal dining space and the living room for entertainment as well. I’ve mentioned before that I don’t think that an open-concept home is right for everyone, and I knew that I wanted to have delineated spaces in my home. When we eventually do entertain in our home, we’ll be able to have the option of closing off each space, or opening them up and allowing guests to roam and mingle. Another benefit of delineated spaces is that when we do entertain, the butler’s pantry, with its swinging door to the pantry, will allow me to hide any entertaining mess behind closed doors. I talked more about my butler’s pantry in this blog post.
As far as the design of the room goes, I think that what makes this room special are the custom features that we included. In all of our projects, we work hard to include custom design flourishes and furniture, and it really does make a room feel really special. One of my favorite pieces in the room is the fireplace mantle, which was hand cut by Traditional Stonework. It’s a statuary marble, and it is absolutely beautiful. Plus, it’s completely fireproof, so even if my entire house burns down, the mantle will still be standing!
On either side of the mantle, we put in built-in, glass-fronted cabinets. Where this room is on the more formal side, I wanted to use the storage here to display some of my favorite books and fragile antiques. The glass was used to help keep these precious items safe from the little hands in my house, and I’m really glad that I did that! In addition to the glass, the antiques are also safe thanks to the cremone bolts holding each door closed. I had never used cremone bolts before, but I really liked how they look, and I have loved how they function. I highly recommend this setup for anyone that has nice things to display, but also has rambunctious kids or pets around.
In our other blog posts talking about the rooms of my house, we have included a section at the end where you can shop all of our sources. In this room, the customizations on each piece make it harder to give a link to shop. However, I am going to talk about each of the sources and provide links where I can.
The sofas are the CR Laine Cassandra Sofa, with a wool fabric as the upholstery. On the CR Laine site, you can view a variety of fabric and leather choices and find what works best for you. However, you do need to find a local retailer in your area who can place an order for you. You can find a local retailer here.
The coffee table was custom designed by me, and built by Scott Shiba, a local woodworker here in Salt Lake City. It is available for purchase through us! If you’re interested, please email info@wdesigncollective.com.
The ottomans can be purchased directly from Redford House. They are the Redford House Abigail Rush Ottoman, but please keep in mind that I had Redford House customize the ottomans with my own fabric, so this version is not available on their site. If you would like to look at the fabric options that are available, click here.
Lastly, let’s talk about rugs. As I mention in the full tour video below, a trick that we often use in our projects is rug layering. Rugs can be incredibly expensive, so to help keep costs down we’ll opt for a smaller antique rug, and then put a larger sisal rug underneath it. This allows you to cover your entire floor at the fraction of the cost of a larger antique rug. Shop one of our favorite layering rugs here.
Thank you for reading! Click below to watch the full room tour.
Just so you know, we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page if you decide to shop from them.