Did you know that Nesting Place has a Facebook Page?  It’s a place we get to hang out and chat and upload photos and do all sorts of Facebooky stuff.  I’d love to have you join in the fun.

Telisha asked a question at the NP Facebook page that I wanted to answer more at length and more publicly –I think it’s a question that many of us have had and can benefit from thinking about::

I think what Telisha is really asking is where do I start? 

It would be different if I was an extrovert and rich and lived next door to Telisha, then I would just show up at her door with a bunch of new furniture choices.  But since I’m not here’s what I can offer online, without ever stepping foot or even seeing photos.

this is what I’m picturing in my head though, just for vision purposes

1. Are the green couches permanent or temporary (AKA: Do you love them?)

It’s fine if you do and fine if you don’t.  But knowing where you stand on those will help you make decisions about how to go about getting things for your room.  It really doesn’t have much to do with the size of the sofas either.  No matter you will go through the same process of thinking and questions.

If you LOVE them, then maybe you would accent the room with other sage green things–sage green in the rug, sage green in the fabric on the drapes.

If you HATE them but need to keep them for now (we all understand that dilemma) then don’t buy anything specifically because it works with something you hate.  For example, about ten years ago we lived in a 1970 style rental and for some reason I bought dishes to match the outdated kitchen that I hated. I bought minty green and rusty orangey dishes because I could hang them on the wall and they looked good with the fake  wood paneling.  Guess what, as soon as we moved, a year later, I HATED those dishes.  Don’t buy something to go with something you already don’t like.

I wrote an entire post about how to change-up your decor and addressed the “I hate my sofa what should I do” debacle.

Design Crisis,   houzz (ABC Dragoo), Traditional Home

 

2. Move The Sofas Around

Everyone (including myself) underestimates the power in trying furniture in ever single place in a room.  It will take a few hours but unless you are expecting, this is something you can most likely do by yourself while your husband is at work, that way you don’t have to try to avoid his weird looks when you move the sofa in front of the fire-place “just to see”.  Even if you know it won’t work, try it anyway.  And remember, they don’t have to be at a 90 degree angle to each other–maybe you have them across from each other (I like to call that look dueling sofas it’s great for conversation).

Here’s a post where I made a video of the process of me moving my sofa to a wall where I 100% KNEW it wouldn’t work–guess what, my sofa is still on that wall today.

…and a few more dueling sofas because I cannot get enough of them as you can see, the sofas can be very different in style or exactly the same.

 

Amy Meier

Urban Grace Interiors

3. Break them Up

Not sure what your couches actually are but I’ll tell you a secret, I have an aversion to love seats.  They are really hard to make work in a normal size room with a sofa.  It’s so much easier to place a few chairs and a sofa in a room than a loveseat and a sofa.  Maybe you can put the loveseat in another room of the house?  Sell it?  Or maybe moving it around will help you find a great spot.

pantone

Moving On

Once you know the best place for the sofas and once you’ve decided if you love them and want to decorate a room around them OR if they are holding places for your dream sofa that will be not the same color–then you can move on.

Here’s a post where I tell how I changed my decor from reds and golds to blues and whites and greens over about an 18 month period.  Without buying any brand new furniture.

Evaluate what you have that you can use in the room, maybe that old dresser from the garage can be painted or that wingback chair with laundry on it that sits in the corner of your bedroom would look great in the family room.

See what gaps you have–do you have a rug that the furniture can sit on?  Rugs are like magic pills that pull a room together–a neutral rug will be a hard worker for years to come–Emily A Clark wrote a great post about her “dirt eating natural, neutral rug”.  This rug would look great in any room.

Next I’d look for drapes–either off the rack ( I like Ikea and Target.com, Ballard and World Market) or make some Window Mistreatments.

And consider if the walls need a fresh coat of paint.  I always like to have the rug before I make paint choices just so I can play off the undertones of the rug once it’s in the room.

I hope that gives a little starting point.  But even if you hate your current sofas, I really believe that you can still incorporate them into a room that you ultimately love (or at least like a lot better). Once you take the focus off the sofa and add meaningful beauty, some handmade items, layers, risky, quirky, fun art and soften with some drapes and a rug–the sofa won’t have as big as a role in the overall chorus of the room.

And don’t forget to join us by liking the Nesting Place Facebook Page!

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Also, if you missed yesterday’s post about Pet Peeves, please do yourself a favor and at least read the comments, they are insane and hilarious and now I have no less than 546 pet peeves to keep track of.