A Quick Update: The Changes I’ve Made to My LA Living Room

It’s been a while since you’ve seen , and boy are there changes. Why? Simply because it brings me so much joy to rearrange my house and tweak styling in an attempt to have my house reflect the personality, style and comfort needs of my family. It’s a hobby that was turned into a career and like all accidental creative business owners, there tends to be way less time to do the stuff you love (i.e. styling my own house). So In my ‘spare’ time I’ve been playing around and with no deadlines (on this room, at least)…it’s VERY fun.

This room has such great bones and beautiful light, but it’s never felt done done. And maybe nothing ever totally is, because your style and needs shift, sure, but I never felt the reaction to this room that I do to the living room in the when I walk in. There is a reason why I haven’t thrown any parties or events here, but couldn’t wait to have a reader event up there—I wanted to show it off!

So here is where we started, as you know, almost 3 years ago.

It’s warm and inviting and yes, full of life, but ultimately too much stuff for us and too traditional for me, mostly because of the rug and sofa combo. I do think it’s interesting and layered and full of personality, though.

Yes, there are times when I wish I had kept that rug, and just replaced the sofa with something more modern. Like maybe the rug got blamed too strongly for it feeling busy. A neutral, more modern sofa on this rug is perhaps all I needed to shift it. But I sold it years ago and someone else is loving it for who it is.

The Target chairs helped modernize everything, for sure, but one of them now lives in the mountain house living room and the other went to our last Feel Good Flash Makeover.

The coffee table now lives in the mountain house and is actually so perfect up there.

I’m still hoarding that chaise because the shape and scale are just so pretty and I have dreams of reupholstering it in a deep color, with the same color fringe. It’s probably 150 years old with original fabric so it’s absolutely falling apart and needs total restoration, but I’m willing to invest in it because it’s special. The blue demilune table now lives in my best friend’s entry and looks SUPER cute.

In this iteration, I brought in more color (some brighter teals in the shelves and art) in an attempt to make it more interesting.

The rug, sadly was pretty destroyed by my cats and we had to “mow” it every time we shot as it was unraveling. It’s now in my garage with a good chunk of it intact and I might cut it down into a smaller rug or have it bound in the exact shape of the kids play nook in the bay window…dunno.

Most recently, this is the version I tried out and showed you:

The green sofa I pulled from our TV room (it’s custom from Clad Home) and paired it with a BLUE antique rug (from Blue Parakeet), so similar in vibe to the red one but less “loud.” You can’t really see it in this photo, but in general, that sofa was just too small for this room and looked out of scale IRL. Plus, this room just didn’t make my heart pound and I wanted it to feel “cooler” and less heavy handed…once I figured out what that meant.

When I look at my past work, past living rooms, I always see this one and think, ah, that room was so pretty.

It was simple and light and still layered and interesting.

I kept that Article sectional up at the mountain house and when we replaced it with the vintage one, I was like, well maybe I should try that back in LA. Maybe THAT’s the answer…a more modern, simple sectional. So I did…

I’ve been living with the room like this for a month or so, and last week, I found this rug at HD Buttercup and it was incredibly soft, and just so simple and pretty. I took it out on “memo” (which means borrowing to see it in your space before fully committing) and well, we all couldn’t give it up. It’s not a shag, it’s just thick and so soft. I know you are all going to want to know about it and I’ll try to find a purchasable link (HD Buttercup only has a few rugs on their website and wasn’t too into working with us on getting a link for it…and I tried to tell them about the blog.