Black and White TV Living Room

It’s been a while since I shared any updates from around my home with you guys. Lately I feel like I have been on a roll! I’ve been making lots of progress in SOME of the rooms in my house, but most of them still don’t feel “done” to me. If that’s even a thing. 🙂 But, just wanted to share some progress with you all in our living room.

So I call this our “TV living room” because we have two spaces in our house that function like a living room. One part of our house is a big open-style space that has our kitchen, dining room, my office, and a living room in it. But then there’s this other space that we decided to turn into the “TV living room” because it’s a fairly dark space (like a movie theatre), and it’s separate from the other spaces. So someone could be watching a show but not really be disturbed if someone else is in their home office sewing a late night quilt or something… not that this happens at our house often. Oh wait, yes it does. Ha!

If you think the layout sounds confusing, check out my empty house tour video, as it helps to really show the spaces better than I can explain in text.

When we bought the house, this room was already really great. All we did was paint the walls white and move in. Eventually I swapped out the light fixture, which was the first big thing that made this room feel more like us. (Also it feels like Beetlejuice to me too – sort of a spider up there!)

The second thing is I pretty recently painted this big black stripe on the wall behind the TV. This serves a couple purposes. First, it helps to hide the TV when it’s not turned on. I don’t really have a big desire to 100% hide my TV in my house because I don’t mind seeing them in spaces. But I don’t really love when they feel like the most prominent thing in the room. So I like how this helps to blend the TV into the wall, unless it’s turned on and we’re watching something.

But the second thing this black accent stripe does is it really showcases the artwork that we hung just above the TV. This is a painting my mother created for my last house, and I’m only too happy that it’s getting an even better spot in our new house. Yay!

Above the couch I hung a series of photos that shows off an erupting geyser in Iceland. I took these photos while we were visiting there last year. I think Iceland is one of my favorite places I’ve ever visited. So I’ve ended up decorating our home with a number of photos from that trip!

Now I must admit, something about the couch area feels a bit off to me. Like maybe our couch is too small for the space? Or maybe I should move it off of the wall some, like maybe it’s too far back. I really like this couch as it folds out into a futon, and Trey and I honestly pull it out so we can snuggle and watches movies together at least a couple times a month – so I like the futon feature. But this part of the room really just doesn’t feel quite there to me – but it’s coming along for sure.

I think we for sure need a coffee table in front of the couch. I had a DIY idea, but I’m wondering if the room has too much DIY already? Hmm.

I already shared the bookshelf on our back wall and also how I had this armchair reupholstered with a bright yellow fabric. I’ve been trying to protect it from dark jeans by adding throw blankets now and again. So far it’s holding up OK but probably not as well as the last fabric (although I like the yellow color, so whatever!). I also might take the seat cover off and either wash it or have it dry cleaned once a year just to keep it feeling bright and fresh.

You can see my home office in the background here too.

We had the cowhide rugs in our last house, and they seem to hold up the best in our house compared to other rugs. Our dogs don’t have messes that often (they have a dog door), but when they do, I seem to have much better luck cleaning these cowhides than I usually do with other rugs. So we decided to layer those with an inexpensive basket weave style rug underneath to make this space feel more cozy.

That’s about it. This room still needs some work, but I’m a pretty slow decorator who also tends to change her mind fairly often. So I’m not really in a big hurry. 🙂 Thanks for letting me share! xo. Emma

Room Sources: TV stand/DIY, Light fixture/eBay, Couch/UO, Black chair/flea market, Yellow chair c/o Thrive Furniture, Basketweave rug and metal glass top side tables/Target, Cowhides/vintage + eBay, Tree stump side tables/DIY, Black and white lamp/vintage, Gold lamp c/o Joss & Main, Magazine holder/DIY, Curtains/IKEA, and Large black and white artwork is an original Elizabeth Chapman.

Credits // Author and Photography: Emma Chapman.