Nicole and Andrew's Living Room

After moving out of my studio, you'd think designing a full-fledged living room without having to fit a bed in the space would be a cinch. Turns out the old adage, "more money, more problems," is true for floor space as well. My partner and I were nonetheless super excited to finally have room for a comfortable couch, two designated workstations, and a true dining table. Luckily, we were again basically starting from scratch furniture-wise, bringing only a leaning bookshelf, a bistro table, and my (last remaining) large plant.

Constraints:

• Low natural light and low air circulation in the apartment meant we were limited on where the plant and workstations could go; It also meant we had to think harder about strategic lighting

• In the same vein, a lack of outlets on several key interior walls limited lighting options

• The one living room window had a deep recessed windowsill with an in-wall AC unit below it, meaning nothing could sit in front of it

• We had almost no living room furniture at all, so the freedom of choice also became a watch-out from a budget perspective

• We wanted to have enough convertible space to host at least 2 guests in our living room

• There were so many blank walls, and we had almost no decor to help break them up

The first thing we started looking for was a couch. I ended up building two main layouts - one based around a couch my partner liked, and one based around a couch I liked. I was also immediately attracted to the idea of either a gallery wall or a picture rail since a) we had a ton of wall space, and b) we had just come off of a year of traveling and had plenty of pictures to show for it.

In layout option 2, I really wanted to keep my pick for an L-shaped couch on the wall with line of sight out the window, so you didn't feel as boxed in when sitting down. I also prioritized keeping my big plant near the window, but that meant workstation #2 (my partner's desk) couldn't also be next to the window. In layout option 1, my partner had his heart set on a modular, gray sectional that really could only fit on the wall without the view out the window. Since we rationalized that we'd mostly be watching TV from the couch at night when looking out the window was less important, losing that line of sight for the benefit of having his desk by the window seemed a worthy trade off.

The final sacrifice was that my plant simply wasn't going to fit in between my partner's desk and the media credenza if we wanted the TV to be centered with the couch on the opposite wall. So, after much research, I found a reliable ceiling-mounted plant light that allowed us to keep the plant fully interior in the dining area instead. After solving that problem, we went with layout 1, bought the couch, and started building a design plan around the baseline color palette (which was yellow wood-tone from the floors, walnut wood-tone from our bookshelf, white from the walls, and now corduroy gray from the new couch).

Before we bought basically anything else, I had a live collage on Pinterest that we put all potential furniture options into to see if we liked the combination. We settled on cobalt blue as our primary accent color with olive green and red as secondaries, and an overall mid-century modern vibe. It sounds all over the place on paper, but we liked the funky combination a lot in practice. This was also my first experience with truly designing a space instead of just laying it out, and I found the collage/mood-board to be 100% invaluable. In fact, I used the same collage approach again when it came time to fill our gallery wall with art (an overwhelming, time-consuming process in and of itself!)

To wrap up this very long case study, we have been very happy with the layout and how the decor came together in the end. Setting aside our nit-picks about the lack of natural light and the devastating reality about how poor the air circulation is in the summer heat; the apartment has been the perfect upgrade from our shared studio era. Not mentioned in this narrative, however, is the still-blank bedroom... reminding me that design is an ongoing challenge and there is always something else to do, so take your time!