Living room makeover
Clients: Michael and Rebecca Smith-Keary
Designer: Annabel
During a visit to Holloways to buy their new dining room furniture, Michael and Beccy began looking at ideas for their family living room. They have an early-Victorian town house in Kidderminster, with many original features and have gradually done up the house, room by room.
The living room still has the original period features — deep cornicing, a restored wooden floor, and the fireplace still has the original grey marble surround with a dark tiled hearth and inserts.
Mood board for Smith-Keary – Living Room
The walls had been painted a terracotta colour, the furniture dark brown leather with upholstered fabric seats and they had floor length curtains made from elaborate dark brocade, with a fringed pelmet and tassel rope tie-backs. The wooden floor was covered with a lovely Persian rug that they wanted to stay, so we selected colours from it for the new scheme.
The challenge with this room was to make it brighter, using lighter colours and different textures, and also to keep it warm, cosy and practical as a room for all the family to relax in.
I put together a scheme on a mood board, mixing an embroidered natural linen for the curtains with tweed sofas and a bespoke tartan wing-back chair. I picked colours from the lovely Persian rug, and the new furniture had to fit in with a couple of existing pieces and pictures on the walls that Michael and Beccy already owned.
Together we choose this sofa for its classical look, with a contemporary edge, and, most important, it is extremely comfortable. We upholstered it in Harper Moss as in this photograph, a gorgeous herringbone weave wool.
Balmoral Wing-back chair and fabric chosen for it, Eltham Seaglass
For the wing-backed Balmoral armchair I suggested a wool tartan, Eltham Seaglass from Warwick’s Sabiro range. It looks fantastic on upholstered furniture and will be totally unique.
The colour palette was moss with pale birch and soft blue to keep it fresh looking. In order to keep the feeling of light, I suggested pale biscuit wall colours to lift the room. We included one blue feature wall behind the fireplace to keep the soft dusky blue running through the theme, reflected in the mossy tweed of the Angus sofa and in the embroidered fern leaf of the Ian Mankin curtain fabric I had suggested.
This job has evolved over a few months but having the mood board as the ‘plan of action’ really helped to bring the scheme together and has meant that we have been able to work through it gradually, in a time scale to suit the Smith-Keary’s.
Michael has done most of the preparation and painting himself, but work was delayed somewhat after he had a cycling accident in the summer and broke his shoulder, elbow and wrist… this slowed things down considerably for them.
We are back on track and our curtain maker, Jo, measured up and is now making the curtains — simple clean lines, interlined, hanging on poles above the windows to allow maximum light.
I am really looking forward to seeing the whole living room completed as soon as the curtains are hung in a couple of weeks time. Michael and Beccy are thrilled with their new room – despite it taking longer than expected with Michael’s injuries. We got there in the end and the result was well worth waiting for!
