Rooms For Rent blog

You are here: Home / Decorating / Creating a Neutral Living Room

Creating a Neutral Living Room

By Bre

Last week I shared with you some updates that have happened in our living room recently. I’m trying to organize our photos a bit better for our home tour page, and references so this post will be mostly for that. There have been a few subtle changes along the way to bring in more of a neutral feel to our living room that I was craving.

First we painted the walls Halo by: Benjamin Moore

 

Before:
{To view the living room in Wasabi Powder, click here.}
 After:

 

Then I shared how I sold the rug, got rid of the bold patterns, added a funky wooden mirror, and sought out to soften things up a bit more. The curtains played musical chairs again, and went back to the solid white linen panels I had in there before (found here).
Now:

 

 The new grey striped pillow covers and vintage edition, I used a christmas gift card and purchased those from H&M.  L.O.V.E. them!! Also another question I get asked all the time, is where I got my roll up blinds from. The are matchstick bamboo blinds from Lowes in mocha 🙂

The trellis rug I had was fantastic. I really loved it, especially for the price and the size. However after living with it for 2 years, it just seemed to swallow the room. It was too big for the room, and the bold pattern was just a bit too busy for me.

 

Our temporary solution, was an old rug from the dining room, that was now too small for our new table. I call it temporary because technically it’s an indoor/outdoor rug from Pier 1 about 8 years ago. I love the stripes, and want to get something similar for the space, just with a little more fluff, and slightly larger.

 

The photo below is another Before, so you can see the half wall, with the built in dvd shelves we put in. However they are a bit distracting when you are going for calm and neutral, And we have some big plans for a new diy tv cabinet that will provide plenty of storage for all those dvd’s.

I’m not quite done filling them, but they recently got a fresh coat of white paint, and some new accessories, and I will be sure to feature them soon, with some close up shots of the displays.

Then, even though it’s ridiculous hard to get the full transformation photographed, I finally brought the trunk coffee table down to the basement and sanded it and stained it, and repeated that process 3 more times until I got it close enough to what I was hoping for.

Again, hard to tell, but it’s a cedar chest, so no matter what kind of stain applied it pulls a lot of warm red tones out. Totally not what I was going for, however I found using two different stains accomplished a better hue. I started off with minwax special walnut for a base, and then only in the reddish parts rubbed on rustoleum weathered grey.

I’m still waiting until I find just the right rug for the space, but I feel very settled on the textiles and color scheme in this room. And if you haven’t seen how things were when we moved in, then oh my you are in for a treat. Click here to see where it all began!

Comments

  2. Donna says

    Love your house and this room. Where did you find the wood mirror and the big dough bowl? Everything looks great!

    • Bre says

      HI Donna! The mirror is from HomeGoods, and the dough bowl I got at a local antique dealer, however you can find them at Painted Fox treasures, they work with antique dealers, and have a great supplier of true authentic ones for the same prices I’ve seen them locally go for 🙂

  3. Bloomsnbeans says

    Thank you for this post….I too made a big purchase involving a trellis pattern that was bold and beautiful, just not for full length curtains in a space that I was wanting to be calm and neutral! I am considering bleaching the fabric to give it a worn, vintage vibe and then reusing as pillow covers (and many other things, because there is A LOT of fabric). Anyway, you have inspired me to not give up on moving toward that calm space that I will actually love. Do you have pictures of your space with the new jute rug you had mentioned?

    • Bre says

      You live and learn right?! lol, Check out my Spring Home Tour {2015}, you will see the jute rug in action in our living room there 🙂

  5. Ollie says

    Your hard work paid off handsomely! The room is soft, serene and pretty…..isn’t it wonderful to walk into a room that is all that?! I may have to copy some of your ideas.

  9. Christina says

    LOVE, love your living room! In the process of lightening mine up too.

    Where did you find your beautiful wood mirror?

  12. Beth says

    Love it! I just want to cozy up and start reading my book in there! Do you think you can ship everything from your livingroom and drop it in mine? HAHAHA…

  13. Kris Vogelsang says

    Wow-we are on the same decorating wave length! We just painted our LR/DR white and edited our collections down in order to get that light/airy/uncluttered look. Loving your fresh new decor!

  17. Megan Gordon says

    Love it! I loved the blue version too with your rug mainly because I have a very similar rug too. My living room is way too green but it’s all the furniture and I’m not about to buy and/or make the slip covers (I’d take free ones though, I’m not crazy… but I doubt that’ll happen). Love the accessories in your room too! 🙂

This error message is only visible to WordPress admins

Error: No feed found.

Please go to the Instagram Feed settings page to create a feed.