Living Room Rearrangement

While D was away for a conference, I decided to do a little furniture rearranging in the house. The truth is, I've been wanting to do this for a while now, but never made time for it. With D gone, I suddenly had all this free time on my hands. The living room was first on my redecorating list.

Here is what it looked like before:

The living room, before.

This was the view from the kitchen/hallway. It really wasn't a bad arrangement (although this photo makes it look better than it was in real life!). But I wanted to experiment, and figured the risk is quite low - I could always put the furniture back the way it was! One of my biggest complaints was that when I was reading a book on the couch, by the white floor lamp, there was nowhere for me to put my tea mug. There was no end table on the other side of the sofa, and the coffee tables ended up being too far away to reach comfortably. And the empty corner behind the couch became a dumping ground for all our wedding-related junk. Super cozy, I tell you.

I did a little living room switcheroo, and here is what it looked like after:

The living room, after.

It's a bit hard to tell from the photos, but the room is much cozier now. At least, it feels that way to me. (Although looking at this photo, I realize that the room could benefit from a larger rug.) I know, I know the sofa is not centered between the windows, but I didn't want to block access to the closet (which is actually our coat closet, since we don't have a real entryway), and besides, I don't think everything needs to be symmetric. And now, there is a lamp and a table for my tea mug on the same side of the sofa. I wanted to soften the room a bit with more textiles, so here is what I did:

• I bought a table lamp (at Home Goods), and put it on the side table. The lamp shade was what won me over - I love the natural feel of linen, with a bit of frilly girliness in the trim.
• I dug up an Indian fabric in our closet (with blue and white camels on it) and draped it over the side table. Bonus points for bringing in more color to the room.
• Some of the pillows that we had in the bedroom migrated to the couch.
• I added a Guatemalan runner that I had lying around to the top of the cubic shelving.

Guatemalan runner on top of cubic shelving.

Of course, the room is not complete. I am not showing you much of the wall to the right of the couch because it still looks unfinished. Moving the couch from that location made the empty space on the wall stand out that much more. I have yet to figure out what to with it, but I would love to bring in some additional storage and hang art on that wall. Also, I'm thinking of getting some floor pillows to put in front of the coffee tables - it's an easy way to provide extra seating and add even more textured textiles to the room!

P.S. Can I just say how much I love taking photos with natural lighting? The photos come out so much better than when I have to use indoor lights (and everything comes out yellow and needs to be Photoshopped), and I don't even need to retouch them. Love it!