Eclectic minimalist bohemian living room1/15/2024 ![]() ![]() Next on my list was the colour, it could only be the wonderfully opalescent Teresa’s Green by Farrow & Ball. This room started to come alive for me with the first instance of natural history when I started my entomology collection (below) years back and each piece I find over time within this theme gives the room a look and a depth I’m really pleased with. I think that this paint colour demands it, its natural pigments (which remind me of changing light on the sea) could look a bit sterile or maybe even a bit bathroom-y if they weren’t set off by the gorgeous hued wings of some mother natures best work – butterflies, or the texture of coral, feathers, the iridescence of shells, plants, dried eucalyptus leaves and even sand. This element works, I think, in tandem with the paint choice. It’s important to me to have some nature and bring the outdoors inside wherever possible but nowhere more so than this living room. From the first vintage taxidermy butterfly I bought in that room it was an aesthetic that made me really happy. The starting point for me then was the elements of natural history we had in our last space. Thinking about our old room, the things I loved most were the elements of natural history, the wall colour, items inherited from the past and the elegant but worn in furniture (outside of the unreality of blogging there is a strategically placed cushion in a shot below which conceals the part of the Chesterfield sofa the cat has utterly decimated!). One of my favourite things about moving is the chance it gives you to think about what you most liked about your previous space so that you can take those as a basis to embellish upon. I guess this is the ultimate goal for leisure time and an admirable one. A lot of the furniture and lighting in the room dates from about the same era 1930’s so I guess I see this space as our take on a refined inter-war theme. We are both history graduates and I did quite a lot on the inter-war period for my MA thesis so this space is a good fit for us. This space I see as a bit of a 1930’s countryhouse retreat, say Atonement minus the stuffiness and replacing chintz for bold patterns. It’s outline is somehow a Mediterranean meets L.A kind of vibe. My garden is based on an ideal summer holiday since this is when I will spend most time out there. I think quite a nice point to start with in rooms is holidays. ![]() That said the new room is considerably smaller and only technically has the same window footage if you include the sides of the bay so some accommodations had to be made – the cocktail cabinet I bought when I was 18 had to be re-homed, we needed some stylish storage bags for our toddlers ever expanding tat collection (we bought these fab ones here) and some new elements needed to be added to pull everything together. ![]() It was a space I felt really at home in, one that expressed aspects of our style whilst allowing us to completely relax and unwind. Why? Because I absolutely loved our old living room, yes I could see plenty of new things that I like, I know Nordic can look really cool in a family space for example, but our old room ticked all the boxes for me and never got boring. But the living room didn’t really figure in my design plans. I wanted more fun in some spaces, more texture in others and accommodations to now being a family home in others. It had taken 6 months between offering on our house and exchange of contracts and I spent much of those months strategically mood boarding, budgeting, getting carried away with pretties, budgeting again, reprioritising and having lots of fun on secret Pinterest boards. I have a confession here (especially to those who read my blog regularly), my overwhelming thought when decorating this room was the old motto that if something isn’t broken don’t try to fix it. This is everyone’s favourite part, right? The bit where you edit down your pieces, add a few special new ones to embellish with and drive your partner crazy moving things around until they are just right (all before a tiny toddler comes into the room and makes his own stylist decisions about exactly what belongs where!). We are now at the really nice point in decorating the house (hallelujah) where we have finished decorating everything internally so can look to objects and styling spaces to make it feel more our own and interesting. ![]()
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