Big Living Room Reveal: From Outdated to Outstanding!

Over the last few weeks I've been taunting you about my BIG living room reveal! We had just moved at the beginning of the month and we were faced with some serious obstacles. As if moving isn't already taxing enough! From a pretty ugly rug to old fashioned radiators that are simply hideous. It's a pretty good sized room, but the layout is quite frankly a nightmare. This post is part of a sponsored series by Raymour & Flanigan. All ideas expressed are my own.

With our main entry way and doors to pretty much every.single.room in our home connecting to this room, it felt something like a train station rather than a place to gather, chat and relax. See: Before Pictures

We needed to change that. We needed a lot of help.   I was really excited to work along with Raymour & Flanigan to tackle this space. After all, it's where we'll be gathering the most as a family and also entertaining guests too. Since we were faced with a completely new space, trying to get old furniture to work is kind of like mixing two boxes of puzzle pieces together and trying to make it work. This would be my first time starting from scratch and designing a complete room from the ground up. Follow along on my journey from outdated to outstanding!

Our Living Room Design Process

The first thing that I did was look on the Raymour & Flanigan website for ideas.

I had no idea that within the first few minutes of browsing their furniture that I would fall in love with pieces that would shape the future our our living space.  I instantly fell in love with the Mirage Server which is a glorious place to start, it would soon become the focus point of our room.  Most of the furnishings on their website also have samples of ways you could use them in a room. This really helped me form ideas on how I wanted my own living room to look!

It features glorious antiqued mirror panels and top. We didn't realize it at the time but mirrored furniture can go a long way in giving a room the appearance of being larger. Score! The server was shown with a dining set, but I was stuck on getting this to work in my living room space. As I was looking at the set, I also fell utterly in love with these Script chairs that also went with a dining set.  When I found out they could be sold separately, I just knew that this had to work!

I love the embellishments and design on the back of these chairs!

My husband had only one request during this whole planning process.  Can you guess what it was? He trusted my judgement in all that is furniture so long as it included a recliner! Since he is currently man-cave-less, I had no problem trying to make that work. Their selection of recliners is quite large and we had no problems narrowing down a few that we both loved.  In the end, we couldn't keep our eyes off of the Marsala Leather Recliner.

It's a beautiful chocolate color and the design is simple unique, comfortable and stylish.

While we were trying to figure out how to make a server, sitting chairs and a recliner work together, I noticed some additional mirrored pieces such as this pretty Jane Mirrored Chest. It wasn't from the same collection, but it looked like a perfect match to me!  I thought it would be another perfect distraction from the train wreck of weird things going on. It fit perfectly against the wall near the thermostat.

These high end mirrored pieces really help distract from those funky things we have going.

Making it all work.

After setting my sights on a few must have pieces, I got stuck.  How would I make two different styles of chairs work?  How would I get the colors to work together? This is where the the Design Center at Raymour & Flanigan comes in.

They actually have an Interactive Room Planner where you can choose to create a room based on the actual dimensions of your own space. I'm more of a visual person, so this tool was really instrumental in helping us start to create our vision. The design team helped us get ours together. They sent us over a sample of how we could make this all work.  Now, maybe it takes a few days or weeks to find what you love. But, both my husband and I fell in love with this layout at first site.  The kicker? We could BOTH have our own recliner!

You can do it two ways:   Open an example in their gallery or create your own plan with measurements!

Once you have your layout, you can add actual Raymour & Flanigan furnature to it. Play around, find what you love. Then, you can print it and bring it to the store where an actual home furnishings adviser can help you!

Nailing the color theme.

We had our layout and the main pieces of furniture we loved. It was time to decide what else we would add to the room to make it all work together.  I decided that whites, creams, dark browns as well as both gold and silver really highlight the beauty of the main furniture that we wanted.  That made it easy to choose additional pieces to coordinate.  The recliners were the darkest, so when I looked at their coffee tables, the Metro II was a perfect fit. I love the dark wood and felt it would make for the perfect balance of colors.

Choosing Odds and Ends.

After all the final decisions were made on the furniture, it was time to finally move on the little things.   Wall art, lamps, decor... oh my!  I really liked the Point of Inspiration resource on the Raymour & Flanigan website. It talks about ways that you can literally create a whole look based on a small accent pillow for example or an inspiring piece of artwork for example.

If you feel stuck, it's the perfect way to get re-focused to create your dream look!

Visiting The Store. 

After we had our plans set and, color themes in place, it was time to go to the store.  We needed to see the furniture in person, sit in the chairs and take it all in. Would we still love the things we chose?  This was my first time vising a Raymour & Flanigan store and let me tell you that I was completely blown away at how BIG it was. The selection was absolutely outstanding.   The way everything was set up, I pretty much planned the rest of my home decor in a matter of 3 minutes flat.  I love how they put looks together to really inspire, it's like taking the guess work out of what would go well with what.  Secretly though, I was happy that we took the time to plan it all out so that we could focus while we were there.

I visited the store in Warwick, Rhode Island.  The staff there was A++ (highly recommend).  From the minute that we walked in until the time that we left, we could tell they wanted us to be happy we came.   We knew everyone's name by the time we left. That is a rarity and it felt great!  We were able to place the order for everything we wanted. The delivery would only be a three day wait! I was elated! Delivery day was wonderful, we were told that the team inspects the furniture before it gets delivered.  They came in like some serious pros and left us with amazing furniture in immaculate condition. Well done Raymour & Flanigan!

To see all of the final accents that I made to complete the look and to find before pictures and stories leading up to the completion of this living room project, make sure to check out these posts: Removing Sticky Labels from Glass Bottles, Spray Painted Glass Bottles, DIY Coffee Table Makeover in Minutes, Spray Painted Decor with Texture & Brushed Metallics and DIY Glitter Mason Jar Candles.

Pretty candles really accentuate the antiqued mirror on our new furniture!

 

That, my friends is how my living room transformed from outdated to outstanding without having to do any renovations.   It's no longer something like a train station, it's a place to call home!

 

Want to start your own design process?

 

Make sure to visit Raymour & Flanigan to find a store near you or to use one of their awesome design tools or get inspiration!

 

Which room in your home could use a makeover?