Family living room makeover with Dfs

For families with young children, it’s often hard to have the perfect living room. You may have had a neat and tidy room with top notch furniture, cream carpets and prized décor before the kids came along, but once they’ve arrived, your adult space naturally morphs into a family room. Toys appear on the floor, CBeebies rule and your neat and tidy furniture suffers from occasional bumps, marks and spills.

We’re fully aware that families aren’t always going to have the pristine showroom style home look that we so often see on Pinterest, but having children doesn’t mean you have to compromise on style. By adapting your ideas slightly and choosing appropriate designs, colours and fabrics of furniture and decor, you can still have a great looking living room, but also one that’s fully serviceable to the needs of all the family.

When Dfs got in touch to ask us to style a sofa, we decided to focus on doing so for a family living room. The family in question have three lively boys and had had their previous sofa for a long time. It had served its purpose well, but by now was looking tired, worn out, saggy and very much at the end of its life.

As you can see, it was the perfect contender for a sofa refresh!

The Dfs sofa

The sofa we chose to style is an Arden three seater.  It’s a contemporary design, so perfect for bringing a more modern feel into their room. It’s got a nice bit of detail to the design in the form of contrasting buttons on the upholstery, which helps set it apart from a plain sofa, along with wooden feet.

The sofa feet were a change from the previous sofa, which was low and had no visible feet. As well as the benefit of providing potential storage space underneath the sofa – think toys or books hidden away underneath in storage boxes – having feet helps to open up the space in the room. We opted for light wood feet to match their existing furniture, but a dark choice is available too.

The Arden sofa is available in a choice of six colour combinations. As it was to be used in a family living room, the charcoal combination was ideal – a dark charcoal fabric with lighter charcoal button detail. The charcoal grey colour is very on trend and popular at the moment, plus it’s a practical colour for a family.

Sofa styling ideas

In terms of styling, our aim was to create a contemporary, stylish feel, to help the room seem more adult-like, but also offer something practical for the needs of three young children. We wanted to incorporate some current interior design trends too, in terms of colours (grey, black and white, to contrast with the existing red curtains and carpet) and modern metallic finishes (copper).

The sofa came without any additional scatter cushions, but we found a great match of colour in the range at George, so added two large cord charcoal cushions (£7 each).

Pretty much all the other accessories we used came from TK Maxx – a great place to shop for affordable, yet stylish, home accessories.

Look 1

Here’s the first look we created:

Every sofa needs a throw, and this one is a light grey cosy throw which is perfect for the kids to snuggle up under (£12.99). The tree design cushion offers a contrast from the plain charcoal ones and adds a hint of Scandi style (£12.99). To help break up the red of the carpet, we added a gorgeous black and white geometric rug (£24.99), which fits perfectly in front of the sofa.

The little white and light wood stool was an absolute bargain from TK Maxx – reduced to £10, and then down to £7.70 as there were some marks on the top of it. But after a good scrub, it came up like new. We added some touches of copper in the form of a wall clock (£10), a useful lidded copper pot (£4.99) and a small easy-to-maintain succulent plant in a copper pot (£2). To help organise the pile of magazines, we used a white wire basket (£14 from Sainsbury’s).

The black and white star design candle on the stool added a nice touch of fragrance into the room, even without being lit (£6.99). You can’t see it so well in this picture, but we found a fun modern horse design ornament too, in a pure white finish (£12.99). The dog lamp to the side of the sofa is their own.

Look 2

Next up, we added a few more white accessories, to make the zone a cosy space for adults to relax and unwind in. This is perhaps more of an evening look for the sofa, as the white isn’t quite so practical in the day when the kids are around with sticky fingers or dirty hands.

The soft white throw is super soft and cosy – a great way of adding a feeling of ‘hygge’ into your living room (the throw was £16.99). There’s a snugly white faux fur cushion too and a sparkly small silvery grey cushion, just to make it feel slightly more glam. And there’s the horse, getting a bit more of a look in!

 

We were pleased with how it looked and the family in question are thrilled with their new sofa and their more modern living room. The sofa is a lovely design, really comfortable to sit on and the fabric seems like it’s going to be hard-wearing.

It’s amazing how a new piece of furniture can change the whole look of a room. With help from TK Maxx, we were able to accessorize and style it in two great looks for under £120 – it just goes to show how far your budget will stretch, if you shop wisely.

What do you think? We’d love to hear your views on this family living room makeover!

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(Disclosure: Collaborative post)

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