Our Living Room Interior Design Project - Choosing Colours for the Living Room

We've started our own little home interior design project in our flat in Edinburgh!

Just to recap: We moved into our new flat in October last year and it's been a brilliant renovation and styling project for us. This is our first home and we couldn't wait to get stuck in with renovations.

NEW HOME, NEW RENOVATION PROJECTS, NEW EXPERIENCES!

We've decided to start our renovation with our LIVING ROOM!

NEW UPDATE

So after a few weeks spent knocking down walls, opening up fireplaces and generally causing a lot of noise and dust, we can finally get on with the actual interior styling, colour schemes and design makeover!

Next step: living room painting colours and ideas.

And despite all the removal of skirting boards, stripping back the old wallpaper, re-plastering, sanding the windows and making them water-tight and re-wallpapering with lining paper....(you'd think that bit would be the trickiest!) The bit that's been the most challenging has been choosing the paint colour scheme for these particular living room walls!

Choosing a colour for a living room it seems is not always that simple.

Narrowing Our Colour Choice..

So we knew we wanted to work with greens as we had a couple of pieces of reclaimed wood furniture that had hints of green amongst the wooden rustic surfaces. This was a handy starting point and I've discovered that designing a room is a lot easier if there's a key piece of furniture in which to base your theme or interior style around.

I also find nature a great starting point for a room colour scheme. I happened to be very influenced by a bunch of flowers which contained lovely warm olive green heathers, with touches of crimson pinks and accents of white (and this has been the influence to the design behind my wallpaper which I have created for our living room feature wall....WATCH OUT FOR THE BLOG POST COMING UP ON CREATING MY OWN WALLPAPER! I can't wait to share!)

Living Room Mood Board

So with the help of a pile of home interiors magazines, we reached for the scissors, glue and paint colour charts and began making a mood board for our living room. The timing off these decisions also coincided with my Interior Styling course at Central Saint Martins where at the same time I had the amazing chance to look around the Chelsea Interior Design Centre and gain further inspiration, gather fabric samples to bring back, view wallpapers and delve properly into the world of interior design!! Loved loved loved it. It acted as a great catalyst for our living room decorating and colour ideas.

And so our living room colour palette and mood board evolved!

We've decided that our living room colours will be olive greens with accents of ochres and purples!

laying a wooden floor and choosing colours for living room-15

And finding that perfect colour of green for the living room walls proved tricky! I tried laying it out and testing with the colour dropper tool in photoshop but couldn't quite get the right colour...

PHOTOSHOP experiments:

And so we reached for the colour paint charts from Little Greene, Sanderson and Farrow and Ball, spent a lot of time staring at the different colours deliberating, before trotted off the the shops to gather some sample pots and started experimenting with the different greens on our living room wall.

TOP TIP

** If you are looking for an amazing selection of sample tester pots to experiment with from Farrow & Ball, Sandersons and Little Greene, then Ian Russell Paint Shop in Warrender Park Rd in Edinburgh has ample supplies! **

And after several tester pots later...we made the leap and painted the living room walls....in 'ACORN GREEN'.

But after all that colour testing, sample pot purchasing and decision making...it still wasn't quite right!! It was a bit too blue, perhaps a little bit cold for our living room?

A bit too cold?

So back to the paint shop it was... we bought even MORE PAINT and a very large orange bucket.

and we decided to mix our own colour! This living room colour choosing and decision making can be so tricky. But on the other hand, it's so satisfying when you get the chance to experiment with paints and finally reach the correct end paint colour.

And so we went a bit brighter with the green..

And a bit warmer...

Result:

A warmer green which is lovely when the sun shines in! We've added a few bits of furniture to help see it in context (and I'm only giving you a snippet at the moment as the room's not nearly finished! Keep your eyes peeled for the updates!)

I'd be keen to hear about your own experiences of living room paint ideas and colours for the walls. Do feel free to leave a comment below!

I just thought I would leave a round up of my painting experiences from our living room. I hope these can act as useful pieces of information when you're considering your own living room colour scheme.

Find an object, piece of furniture, (or in my case a bunch of flowers!) can be really helpful to act as a starting point to narrow down your colour choice
Gather plenty paint colour charts and think of one dominant colour for the walls and couple to act as accent colours
Visit your local paint shop and spent time purchasing some paint sample pots to test out on the living room walls
Leave the paint to dry before making a final decision and leave it 24 hours to see the colour in daylight and the evening
If it's not right the first time, DON'T PANIC! You can always paint over with a second coat
If you're still not getting the right colour then consider mixing your own! - Orange buckets from B&Q are only £1!

Stay tuned for the next instalment on the blog: LAYING THE WOODEN FLOOR! I can't wait to share the progress!

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