A Narrow Living Room Reimagined; ORC WK 6 - Textiles and Wall Color

Before we delve into textiles and wall color, you probably heard that last week the ORC took a pause to allow for more important conversations in light of the continued and heightening racists acts against the Black community. I shared some resources our family is exploring in a short post. If you’re interested in learning more about systemic racism in our country, please check it out.

If you’re just joining my ORC journey, all of the past links and info is at the bottom of this post. Now let’s catch up…

Textiles

A few weeks ago, I shared a glimpse of the textiles I started pulling together for this space. Can I get a drum roll for the final selections?!

For the sofa, chair and ottoman we wanted to go the custom route. The ideal sectional would certainly be a custom size, and with the features we wanted in the chair and ottoman, it just made sense.

I chose narrow track arms on the sofa, with bench seat cushions and loose backs. The chair is a swivel, and the ottoman will be oval with a custom nail head detail. I snapped a couple of pics the day the sofa and chair arrived…

Here is the room set up with our old coffee table and some pillow testing going on.

Gah! What a luxury it is to have a big comfy place for us all to lounge!

The Drapes

At one point I had considered new custom drapes, but the reality of our current economy led me to shift gears and consider using what we had. When we moved in, I had purchased these simple Ikea Ritva drapes for our downstairs windows. They are such a steal at $40 for a pair. That’s two panels measuring 57″x118″ each. I’m not sure if you can even buy fabric that inexpensively. They have a lovely linen-like texture. They can be difficult to iron well, and being cotton they shrink and expand with the seasons and humidity. But those downfalls were worth the cost benefit for me. To create the ripple fold, I used drapery pins and rings. I picked a lovely trim to add to the leading edge, my workroom added the trim and hemmed them, and I think they turned out beautifully.

There are four large windows in this room, including the one with the new window seat. I thought it would be nice and balanced to have drapes on that window as well, knowing that realistically they may be a bit of a pain when the seat was in use. I figured I could get the drapes up, live with it for a bit, and if they were too much trouble, I could do a roman shade there, instead.

See how nice and consistent it is to have drapes there, too? Well, spoiler alert…

It quickly became clear that they would rarely be hanging neatly untouched. I pinned up one of the panels to replicate a roman shade, and decided to move forward with that plan.

Stay tuned for the final look!

The Wall Color

The wall color we had in here before was Simply White. I do LOVE a white room, and this room has the big dose of natural light necessary for white to work well. But, y’all know I’m all about the warmth and coziness here, so I wanted to deepen the walls a bit.

I pulled out my invaluable color boards to narrow it down.

Since the sofa takes up so much visual space, I propped the boards up there to compare. I had narrowed it down to Wool Skein and Shoji White. You can see how those compare to the old wall color, Simply White. Chantilly Lace is the trim/built-ins color. Wool Skein was too dark, so Shoji White it is!

Pro tip: Don’t burn candles close to your walls. On our narrow mantel, candles caused soot stains on the wall and ceiling above. If you should find yourself with soot stains, don’t wet them to clean. Apparently there are “soot sponges”, which are used dry to remove the soot from the surface. Wish I’d known that before! I ended up having to paint the ceiling, as well.

I know it’s subtle in the photos below, but it’s amazing what a fresh coat of paint will do! Having all of the old nail holes filled and the soot marks and kiddo smudges gone, makes for such a satisfying change!