This post is sponsored by Nebraska Furniture Mart, than you for supporting the brands that support Handmade in the Heartland. All opinions are honest and my own.
When you move into a new house what is your first priority for decorating? Mine is always the kitchen and living room, the bedrooms are totally neglected for at least a year while I figure out how to decorate my living room. Our living room is bigger than our last house so we decided to get new furniture. We went to Nebraska Furniture Mart and picked out an oversized extra large sofa and 1 1/2 chair in a neutral color, we also added the special care warranty that guarantees it can be cleaned or they will replace it. (Awesome because I have 3 kids and a dog!)
I was so excited to add THESE 2 chairs to the living room, I am totally obsessed with them. The nail head detail adds a little formality to our living room and we love the added seating when friends and family come over. I had been waiting to add two chairs to the space and when I saw these on the Nebraska Furniture Mart website I was in love!
Nebraska Furniture Mart has so many beautiful accent chair options, to be honest I found at least 5 different chair options that all would have been wonderful in my space. You can browse the huge selection HERE. Through the process of having 2 homes I have come to realize a few rules for myself when decorating, 5 of them are below.
5 Tips for decorating your living room
- Paint with neutrals, accent with color. I learned this the hard way, and of course this isn’t the hard and fast rule for everyone but let me explain. In our first house I painted the entire main floor apple green, i loved the color and I accented with black and white prints and decor. It was fun and darling and 2 years later I wanted to change up decor a little bit but the walls were green, so very very green. After that I learned that I like to change things too frequently and i don’t have the energy to paint walls every couple years. So if you paint your walls a neutral color you can change colors in your accents like wall art, pillows, rugs & decorations and have a whole new look to your room. In the case of our new house we didn’t choose the wall colors- but thankfully we moved in to very neutral walls.
- Choose furniture you love. I don’t know about you but I don’t like to drop large sums of money every few years, and big ticket furniture items can be expensive. I love Nebraska Furniture Mart and huge variety of options they have. In my opinion its worth it to pay a few hundred dollars more on a couch and other living room furniture that you love and are great quality than to buy something that you will want to replace in a few years.
- Base your colors on a piece of art. Choosing colors can be difficult but if you base your color palette for decorating on something that you love you can’t go wrong. Decorating is all about personal style and taste so find a piece of wall art or fabric that you like and then base all your other decisions on that. We used a large vintage map of Nashville for the base color palette for our entire main floor. You can find the apple green, orange-coral, navy and neutral browns throughout the map and throughout the decorations in the living room.
- Live with things before you commit. Going with the theory above lets say you want to change up the entire color scheme of your living room. You found a throw pillow at Nebraska Furniture Mart that you are just obsessed with (because it always starts with a throw pillow, am I right?!) and now you want to start from scratch and redecorate the whole room. Buy the pillow- but don’t buy anything else… yet. Bring the pillow home, put it on your couch, look at it in all lights (morning, afternoon, etc) see if you still love it after a week or so, if you do then start looking for coordinating decor items.
- Don’t rush it. We moved into our house in July, I’m pretty happy with how our living room looks but if I’m honest I was pretty mad at myself that I didn’t get new throw pillow covers made before I took these photos. How boring are those plain gray pillows on my couch! However the reason I haven’t made pillow covers (other than having a 2 month old baby) is that I haven’t found the perfect fabric yet. I think it is important to remember that you don’t have to go out and get everything to decorate a room in one day or weekend. The times I’ve gone out and wanted to finish a room I always end up buying things that I like but don’t really love, and guess what I end up getting rid of whatever that thing was way sooner than I should have. Be patient and wait for things you love.
I’m also a huge fan of displaying family photos, the white frame below was actually a mirror I found on craigslist. I took the mirror out and popped in our family photo and I love it!
A good friend of mine once told me to use what I have for decorating. You might keep your trifle dish stored away in a cabinet, I know I did for a long time, but then realized I could pull it out and put fake fruit, ornaments or other pretty things in it and use it for decor. The 2 days out of the year that I actually use my trifle dish I just take it off the shelf, it gets so much more use out on display that stored away in the kitchen!
What do you love about decorating? Where are your favorite places to shop? I went to Nebraska Furniture Mart during the Christmas season and it was full of beautiful decor pieces and of course lovely furniture. I swear there is something beautiful to look at in every little corner! Here are a few of the photos i snapped in store.
