From the Floors Up

Decorating with Comfortable Farmhouse Style

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Even if you don’t have a farmhouse style home, the style can work for you. Farmhouse is all about comfort with a nostalgic, vintage flair.  Found pieces from flea markets, estate sales and antique shows mix with comfortable upholstered pieces in either traditional or shabby chic styles.  It’s an easy style to live with and great for all rooms in the home.

This living room is full of charming farmhouse furniture and accessories.  The room itself is a standard design with wood floors, recessed lighting and crown molding.  It could be a renovation or new construction, and demonstrates how well farmhouse style can fit into a home. Neutral wall color lets the colors of the curtains, furniture and accessories stand out.

Vintage finds add character to the room. An old painted trunk makes for a charming coffee table with storage in the seating area.  Vintage inspired lamps throughout the room create lighting zones and accent lights for reading.  Comfortable seating in pretty slipcovers in natural linens and cotton make for easy cleaning.  This is definitely not a living room where you’d be afraid to put up your feet.

The wide plank wood floors offer a rustic charm.  A jute rug with a colorful border that coordinates with the colors of the room centers the seating area.

This living room shows how charming farmhouse style can be. Mixing in vintage and antique pieces let the homeowner’s personality shine through to make the room feel comfortable and personal. Fabrics and furniture further the feeling of comfortable farmhouse charm.

Adding Pops of Color

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If you follow design shows on TV or read design blogs (like this one), you’ll be familiar with the beloved “pop of color” used by designers.  The pop of color is that burst of accent color that adds life and energy to a design.  It can be a single color, contrasting colors, or multicolored. These pops are typically accent pieces and accessories.  Even a large piece of furniture in a color can be a pop of color if it is in a neutral space. More commonly the pop of color is something small that can easily be swapped out for another object, should the mood strike.

In this living room, predominate colors are neutral.  Neutral color upholstery on the chair, neutral wall colors, and the neutral carpet make for an almost monochromatic room. The dark brown TV stand/cabinet creates a focal point for the room.

While layers of tonal colors can feel sophisticated and chic, interest in this room comes from the small pops of color.  The purple accent pillow on the chair and area rug add a nice layer of color. The green and red bottles as décor on the TV stand/cabinet also add more depth.  Any of these colors can be swapped out and the effect would be the same.

Art on the wall introduces other colors to the room and becomes its’ own pop of color. The fact that the painting colors don’t perfectly match the other accent colors makes the combination more interesting and less matchy-matchy.

Using Neutral Colors in Decorating

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In decorating magazines and blogs today there is so much talk of colorful decorating and pops of bright colors.  This might make you think everyone is decorating their homes in washes of strong colors and bold accents. This isn’t the case. Many people prefer to use neutral colors and whites in their interiors. No matter whether this is a preference or a fear of color, You can still create inviting and warm interior using neutrals of creams, white and browns as this living room shows.

The color palette for this room is set by the architectural elements of the fireplace and wood column.  Leaving the stone fireplace and wood column natural lets their beautiful materials be the stars.  The two colors are then carried throughout the furnishings, curtains and flooring to create a well designed room.

The wood of the column is repeated on the coffee table. The warm hue also becomes an accent color in the area rug below the coffee table.  The rug ties in both the cream of the walls and furniture along with the stone fireplace and wood colors.

Using different shades of neutrals creates a layered look.  Pattern and texture can add interest like they do in this living room.  The pattern of the rug as well as the texture of the wood, stone and upholstery mix together to make for a more lively design.  Adding patterned throw pillows to the seating or a bit of the wood or stone color would bring more interest to the cream upholstered sofa and chairs.

Using Upholstery to Create a Polished Room

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Along with the major design decisions like flooring and wall finishes, furniture is what sets the tone and style for a room.  Furniture style is how we define ourselves as traditional, modern, country or contemporary.  How we finish our furniture can be just as important in creating the look of a room as the style of the furniture. Upholstery plays a huge role in decorating a living room.

This contemporary space is a great example of how upholstery can be used to create a polished and pulled together looking space.  The furniture in this room is all contemporary in style but is not a suite of furniture that completely matches in form.  The sectional’s clean lines are echoed in the simple square upholstered ottoman that serves as the coffee table.  The curved side chairs are more fluid and sculptural than either the ottoman or the sofa.  What unites the pieces together is the matching upholstery fabric.

While this living room uses the same upholstery throughout the soft furnishings, that doesn’t have to be the rule for all upholstered pieces in a room.  In fact, having an accent chair in upholstery fabric that contrasts or compliments the sofa upholstery can make the chair more of a focal point. Choosing an accent fabric that contains the sofa color is a way to tie the two different fabrics together. Accents like area rugs and pillows can also play off the colors of the upholstery to bring the entire décor together into one cohesive and polished look.

From the Floors Up

From the Floors Up blog was created with the goal of providing a destination for consumers, designers and those interested in the flooring, design, and kitchen and bath industries. Here you’ll find, current, accurate and informative information that is always just a click away!

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