Living Room Makeovers:
How To (Re-) Decorate A Living Room
For A Lighter, Happier Feel

Ideas for living room makeovers - a South African expat needed living room interior designs that would make her feel more at home in her rental home in Germany.

Below are three living room makeovers; a 'neutral', a 'feminine', and a 'masculine' version.  The brief was to come up with decorating ideas for a living room that currently has white walls, cool & practical white floor tiles ...

... aluminum window and door frames ...

... and minimalist silver-colored track lighting overhead.

Here's Shaan's wish list for livingroom designs and decorating ideas for her living room:

Out-Of-Africa  Living Room Makeovers:
Preparation

So how do we get from this ...

... to this ...

... preferably in three simple steps ;-)   just by using

• Shaan's living room furniture (plus a new rug)
• the color white
• the color blue, and
• Shaan's DIY skills?

Obviously, we could try to transplant  South African style, wholesale, into Shaan's living room. But somehow I don't think stuffed antelope heads under postmodern lighting and animal skins on factory-made white tiles are going to make the right impression :-)

So let's instead translate the "Out-Of-Africa" theme to make it fit with the aluminum door frames, the track lighting, and the pale Northern European sunlight.

Daylight in Germany is much paler and more blue-tinted than sunlight closer to the Equator, where the sun hits the earth more directly and the red/yellow part of the spectrum isn't filtered out by frequent thick cloud cover. Vivid, highly saturate colors that would look perfect under an African sun will look garish and out of place in all but Mediterranean Europe.

Out-Of-Africa  Living Room Makeovers:
Take 1 - Materials

Shaan has no cane chairs in her living room, but let's use this "Out-Of-Africa" cue and translate it into a similar material, straw, to replace the large rug.

Natural fibres make handsome and robust floor coverings:

• coir,
• jute,
• seagrass, and
• mountain grass.

Any of them can be turned into a custom, oversized rug, like this:

More living room design ideas in this picture:

1. Off-white slipcovers/upholstery.

• the white color of the upholstery fabric needs to be meticulously matched to the slightly grayish floor tiles and the white walls, and
• the material should be substantial - something like heavy canvas - unless you want wrinkled seating with a 'laundry basket' look.

2. One blue 'feature' wall, which serves two functions:

• to introduce the color blue (which needs to be repeated in cushions and/or other decor elements), and
• to change at least some wall color, in an easily manageable way.

3. A larger, well stuffed sofa cushion. Ideally, Shaan will need several of these on both sofa and armchairs, to make the seating look

• more substantial,
• softer, and
• more comfortable.

This will help her balance the hardness of the surrounding surfaces, and introduce some 'South African ease' into the room.

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Out-Of-Africa  Living Room Makeovers:
Take 2 - Florals

One way to "soften" modern living rooms is to keep the color scheme light and use low-contrast, nature-inspired pattern.

And since South African livingroom designs do feature floral elements, one way to decorate a living room in this vernacular should include a touch of ... summer.

Small changes from the living room interior designs above:

• the 'feature wall' is a lighter blue
• the dining chairs are (slip-)covered in the same floral fabric as the sofa cushions
• a few ruffles have entered the picture (Shaan could use knife pleats to keep the look more 'neutral').

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Out-Of-Africa  Living Room Makeovers:
Take 3 - Adding Drama

One material used in South African livingroom designs (as Shaan mentioned above) is leather. We could employ it to increase the nature-inspired feel of this room, adding another layer of natural texture and color to our current set of living room ideas.

So here's the last one of our living room makeovers:

Notice how the darker back wall makes the white surfaces look brighter by comparison? It also helps balance the dark wooden living room furniture.

The striped fabric on the dining room chairs introduces a formal element (and a bit of attitude).

Are there any additional ways for Shaan to decorate a living room with a South African 'accent'?  Well, there's that picture on the wall above the armchairs ...

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Out-Of-Africa  Living Room Makeovers:
Take 4 - Living Room Wall Art

Shaan could decide to replace the large cityscape with an informal collection of smaller pieces -

• watercolors,
• etchings,
• antique maps,
• old documents,
• drawings ...

This would create a mellower look, more reminiscent of South African living room interior designs.

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