Farmhouse to Updated Traditional (and a LOT more space for this big family!)

Transformation time! Let’s talk about transitioning this living room, which is kind of a farmhouse style living room, into a more modern, traditional dream. I am so excited to show you this one, because I think a lot of you guys have a very, very similar style home, and a similar style fireplace. And you can see that this living room right now feels a little small for this growing family in this big, beautiful custom home.

They didn’t build it that long ago. They actually moved here very, very quickly for work. And because they moved super quickly and they built super quickly, they chose all their furnishings and their finishings super quickly in just the couple of days that they were down. And so the client shared with me that she’s never been super happy with the living room, has thought about moving because of it, because it just felt too small. It didn’t have enough room for their family. So let’s look at how we solved that.

So let’s take a look at the layout first. By adding in a nice big L-shaped sectional, we now went from being able to seat a couple people here and a couple people there. But if you’re watching TV in this space, which is kind of where they do hang out and watch TV, really, there was only room on a three seater sofa for a fairly large family. So we wanted to make sure that more people had the chance to stretch out, watch TV and be able to host a conversation in here.

So by just squaring off the layout a little bit, it really allowed us to get a lot more people in the room and without the living room feeling claustrophobic. It actually is a big space. It just didn’t really look like a big space from the way that the furniture was laid out before.

So look at this. We were able to fit in a very large sectional, a couple of ottomans, a nice, big coffee table, and a couple of chairs. The coffee table that they had was actually from Comfortable Dwelling. And they had bought that from us about, I’d say eight or nine months before they reached back out saying, “Hey, I need a little bit more help with our space.”

So we did give them here, two different options. A lot of the images that they love had kind of the black iron work and things like that. So I thought it would be cool for them to actually paint out their cabinets here in the black, and maybe do a little bit of a linen detail or maybe a cane front detail on them. Just to add a little bit more beauty and take it from farmhouse into something a little bit more of that updated traditional look, that’s become really super popular, and the client really, really fell in love with.

Bringing in a couple of natural lamps here also lent them a bit more privacy against their neighbours next door. Their window treatments were great and they were almost brand new. So we kept the window treatments the same here and here. In my rendering, looks a little bit pinky. This is not going to be pink. It’s going to be a linen colour, like a really nice either super light grey or a super light beige to help to tie all of this together, where we’ll layer in some olive and rust and mustard pillows, just to add that vintage vibe to this space.

A couple of chairs over here that are fairly small in scale, but still comfortable enough for most people to sit in, even if you’re tall with a beautiful back to them. So either maybe a strapping detail or a cane detail. We’re still in the process of choosing some furniture here, so I don’t know what we’ll end up with quite yet, because this project is sort of expanded now into the dining room and things like that. So we want to make sure that everything flows together nicely.

And then the ottomans here will be a beautiful stonewashed linen. It almost looks like an old denim that’s faded out, but not quite denim, it’s a really beautiful linen. So really excited about that. We reused the client’s coffee table because it was brand spanking new. And by using a square rug instead of a rectangular rug, we were able to really create this beautiful layout. But we did say to the client, “If you did want to, because square rugs are hard to find, if you wanted to go rectangular, you could simply take the ottomans off the rug so that they were sitting on the floor instead.”

So let’s take a closer look here at some of the details in the space. We kept it fairly simple on the styling because we don’t want to clutter it up any. We want to make sure that it still feels really lovely, really beautiful. If you’re going to use ottomans in front of a fireplace, just remember they need to be 18 inches away from any heat source to avoid damage to the fabric itself and also just for fire code and safety.

She did end up loving the black cabinets and is going to go for it, and really loving just this view of the fireplace. These types of tools really help us to kind of visualize what this space might look like, right? Bringing in these photorealistic renderings really helps us to go, “Okay, we know exactly how big we can go in the sofa. We know exactly how much room is in between all of these pieces, so that I’m confident that the room is not going to feel cluttered. The room is not going to feel too claustrophobic.”

Because sometimes even in a photo or a rendering, things can look closer together than they appear, right? These ottomans really close to this coffee table, but they’re not. There is sufficient walkway to get in and around them, even if this family is fairly tiny, but the husband is super tall. But they aren’t heavy people by any means, but even if they did have a guest who was, they would still feel super comfortable getting around this space. And that’s really important to us. We want to make sure that we have proper walkways and airways between things and this process of kind of doing the layout and really planning efficiently, can really help with that.

Over head layout here of the space so that you can see. In a photo, these looked really close, but you can see there’s tons of room here. There’s sufficient walkway all the way around. And we made sure to really measure in this space as well, to ensure that it would still feel nice and beautiful and open inside of the space.

A console on the back of the sofa will help to hide any seam on the sofa, if we end up needing a seam, because it is a really large piece. And it would also add a bit of separation to the dining room, which has open concept behind it.

So I hope that those of you guys who maybe want to give your farmhouse build a little bit of an update, were able to get some ideas from this. If your living room is feeling too small, it’s likely just the layout problem. I promise you, in most cases, most people just have not laid out their furniture that efficiently. So just by simply changing out the layout, it can really do wonders for your room.