Last month I introduced a new series HERE, where as a side quest from my forever home search I’d create moodboards as a way to reintroduce my creative mind to the task of seeing the potential in home listings. And today I’m sharing my first one!
Before
In the listing I found for this month’s makeover, I chose this L-shaped living room. I thought the layout in general could make much better use of the available space. I mean, look at all that open floor! I also saw real potential in the alcove that currently houses all the seating. Bonus points if you can guess what for…
Floor Plan
First, a disclaimer: I do not have accurate dimensions of this space, the furniture pieces are not to scale, I am not an architect or interior designer, and I do not use CAD. All that said, my rendering is just a visual approximation based on the photos available to me and is intended to create a general floor plan for furniture placement ideation.
This space has a lot of windows and doors positioned so that furniture placement is tricky, but not impossible. There’s one angle missing in the photos so I’m not sure of the wall space available between the stairs and the double windows on the TV wall. No matter, I would keep the TV in the same general vicinity and choose to float the sofa in front of it and have a coffee table and accent chair to fill out the living space.
There is no formal entryway, so next to the door I would build or buy a piece that could serve as entry way storage: a bench under the window and taller cubbies to the left.
The and that big nook? It would be a perfect art space! Did you guess right?? I would float the desk facing out toward the living space, but could just as easily place against the back wall, facing to look out the window. And an easel in the corner would be perfect!
Moodboard
As with most of my brainstorming, I start with a Pinterest search for various items I am looking for. For inspiration mostly. For actual sourcing sometimes.
For this space I was looking for an art table, a long couch with a short chaise, an arm chair, and a piece of furniture that could serve as a mudroom-esque storage in the entry. A coffee table, a TV console (not pictured) and a sofa table. Some kind of book storage in the nook near the staircase would be ideal. I love the image above, but that would require some construction to work in this space. But the spirit is there.
While going down a Pinterest rabbit hole, the algorithm feeds you other images and thus ideas. The green pegboard for art supplies jumped out at me and would be a perfect installation on the one non-windowed wall in the alcove. And that was the springboard for the color scheme. The green couch came next. Then the patterned rug with tiny touches of green, and more teal blue and terracotta tones. Then the teal chair, etc…
It’s funny because while I have been designing and redesigning my current home, a sage green color palette always comes to mind, though I have yet to do it. Maybe one day…
You can see my full Pinterest board for this space HERE, including other examples of the different elements I would want to include if I lived here, or was designing a room like this IRL. Plus all the links to original sources.
So, what do you think? This was a fun exercise and more challenging (and time consuming) than I expected. But I enjoyed putting together my moodboard and am looking forward to doing more in the months to come.
How would you lay out this room?
