living room tour and plans for an update
The number one question I get, in both interviews and chats with customers alike, (aside from "how do you find time to squeeze in all that you do!?") is "does your home look like SMUG?" I do share some snaps of my home on Instagram and am often chatting away on stories from home, so chances are that you've seen bits and bobs of what our flat looks like and the way we like to style it. So what do you think? Does it look like my design store SMUG? It is certainly full of products by the designers and brands that I love and so also stock at SMUG. Another similarity is that it has evolved over several years much like SMUG. I'm a collector (read hoarder) by nature and so our home tends to become layered deeper and deeper and then recurated month on month and year on year.
Almost all of our furniture has been gathered over the years previous to living in this flat. Some pieces, like the sideboard, actually came with the flat which was a nice bonus. Other than the Parker Knoll armchair (which needs recovering), we've not actually purchased a single piece of furniture for this living room. That, combined with the fact that Constantin (our 14 month old son), is now cruising around the whole room and can reach everything on the sideboard (eek!), means that we feel it's time for a declutter and a restyle.
Right at the top of our list for the redesign is to incorporate a corner sofa. We don't currently have anywhere that the whole family (me, my husband Dan, Mabel our daughter the cat and Constantin) can all chill together, lying down if we so wish. This means a big layout and style shift for us as the vibe has always been lots of smaller bits of seating placed around the room. We currently have a reupholstered Ercol two seater sofa, which will most likely move to my studio above SMUG, as well as various Eames rocking chairs and of course the Eames lounger, which we will hope to squeeze in on the other side of the room. The idea is to put a corner sofa (big enough for all four of us) right where I'm sitting in the photo above, spanning the space taken up by the current Ercol sofa, into the corner the Eames lounger currently sits in and then out along that wall like a big upside down L shape.
As I mentioned, I'd like to reupholster the armchair in a beautiful new fabric but keep it where it is location wise. We're also thinking of switching up our lamps and are on the hunt for the right artwork to add to our gallery wall in the space above our ceramic dog Gladstone's head. We'll be moving plants around of course (our Monstera is getting HUGE) and we would also like to splurge on some new cushions and or blankets to complement what we already have and to hopefully pull the whole thing together.
We still love so many of the collections we have had on display on our sideboard but it's time for a much cleaner look now that Stan's on the move. I'm working on a new vision for the sideboard which is still us but very paired back compared to our curated museum-esque look of recent months and years.
We're hoping to install a hearth below our fireplace so interesting tiles are also on the list of must finds for our living room update. As you can see, we are rather partial (much like we are at SMUG) to accent pops of pale pink and mustard yellow and these wont be going anywhere. We've actually fallen in love with a pink velvet corner sofa from MADE.COM which would defs bring more pink into the mix as well as quenching our comfy corner sofa desires. I'll be back soon with a mood board including inspiration images (I might have to start a new Pinterest board!) and material samples we've gathered. Would love to know your thoughts. So excited for this living room update. Thanks for coming along for the ride. Speak soon!
Photography by Alex Reyto