I need help! My formal living room is in need of your expertise. I have the room almost finished but I stand at an impasse. I know that there is more work to be done but I don’t know what the room needs to finish it out.  ~ Jennifer

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Jennifer, you are off to a great start. You have paint and you are not afraid to use it!   Now, as you said, you just need to pull it all together. And that is the hard part.  The “pulling it together” phase of design, for most of us, is a lifelong effort.

Since your ceilings are so tall, you really need to pay attention to scale — meaning that your accessories have to be BIG or they will look ridiculously small in the space. Things that are bigger and weightier will work better in this space than things that are small and delicate. For example, your coffee table in front of the sofa is chunky enough to fill the space, but the side table to the right, although exquisitely beautiful, is delicate and would work better in a smaller room like a bedroom.

When pulling a design together, it’s best to work big to small. That means the first design element you need to tackle are your windows. Taking color cues from the fabric in your sofa, I would shop for a fabric that pulls in these colors as well as the eggplant on the adjacent wall, something like the stripe shown below.  Look for fabric that has some weight to it as opposed to sheer and airy. I would repeat this fabic in a few pillows and then also add another coordinating fabric somewhere, maybe in a faux roman shade or something like that.

Because your ceilings are so tall, I recommend that you have panels made to hang at least 12-inches above the top of the window to keep the eye moving up. You could even get away with single-fabric width stationary panels since you have blinds for privacy and light control. 

On the wall on the right, with the two side-by-side windows, I would consider hanging one long rod across both windows with panels at either end and then one in the center to give the illusion of one big wall of windows.  I would also probably add some sheers to disguise the fact that the windows are not full length and to provide diffused lighting which adds ambiance.

As far as curtain rods, I would go with a 3-inch rod in a dark wood finish with pineapple finials.

The second purchase I would make is a rug which will anchor the furniture, help to define the space and add color/texture/pattern. I never mind spending money on a good rug because it’s one of those things you can move from room to room or home to home as your tastes and lifestyle changes. I would look for a rug that pulled out the darker vibrant colors in your sofa fabric – eggplant, burgundy, rust and gold. 

After that I would focus on lamps, again something big and substantial and in keeping with the mood of the room, and then beyond that, work on finding art and smaller accessories.

One thing that I would change in your existing design is the tapestry behind the sofa. It is too small for the space and the motif and color don’t really refer to anything else that is going on in the space. In place of that I would look for a group of things that read as a whole – four large pictures hung to make a rectangle, three wide but narrow pieces stacked vertically to make a rectangle.

Another thing you might consider is your furniture placement. The sofa between the windows on the back wall is kind of expected. Think about angling it in the corner by the two windows with something tall and organic behind it.

 Another option would be to put an armoire or bookcase between the two windows. This would provide a focal point and occupy the space in the same way a fireplace would. Add some accessories on top – a large framed metal grate or one large picture and some fat rustic pots with a bit of greenery — and you’ve solved the perennial “what to hang over the sofa” problem as well as keeping the eye moving up and around the room and absorbing some volume.  I really like this armoire to the right.  The dark wood refers to your other dark wood furnishings, it is chunky and substantial and the inset arched doors repeat the arches found elsewhere in your house.

In my next post,  we will look at what to do about the adjacent dining room and how to make the two spaces work together.