LIVING ROOM MAKEOVER || HOME DECORATING TIPS & IDEAS || RENTER-FRIENDLY DECORATING

Hey there everyone, it's Jenna. Welcome or welcome back to the channel. In today's video, we are going to be making over and restyling our main living room. And if you're new here, basically we moved into this rental a couple of months ago and I've been slowly going room by room to make this space feel like a home for us. So I'm excited to show you how I can transform this space using simple styling techniques. Excited to share the transformation with you all and without further ado, let's get into it. Okay, so this is the space that we're starting with and this is the living room that's open concept with our kitchen space. It is on the smaller side, definitely a lot smaller than our previous living room just because of how narrow the space is. So we're going to try to configure the furniture in an aesthetic and practical way in here. But the first thing that I really wanted to take care of was this dated ceiling fan. And ideally we would have just swapped this out for a pretty light fixture, but here in Arizona the fan definitely gets used. So we found this matte black one at the Home Depot and this just really helps to give the room a more current feel. And it'll be nice because when we leave we can just swap the fan back and take the new one with us. So the first piece of furniture that we brought in here was this sideboard that I brought with us from our last house. And I found this piece at HomeGoods and I love the marble and wood combo. And then next we laid down this vintage inspired rug. I love the subtle pattern on it and it has kind of a light blue gray coloring to it. So that will go really well with the furniture that I picked out for this space. It's actually really affordable and it comes in warmer colors as well. So I'll link that below down in the description box as well as anything else that I can from this video. But I like to ground my space with textiles first. So after laying down the rug I then hung these curtains to soften the walls and draw attention away from the older windows. And I showed this in our kitchen makeover video, but I really love the light gauzy feel of these curtains. It just helps to give this room that laid back organic feel. And since this will be the main hangout space this is where we're going to put the tv. But unfortunately the scale of this large tv on the smaller console just really bothers me. But we're working with the furniture that we have so I'm not going to go out and get a smaller tv or a larger console table just for this temporary situation. So it kind of is what it is here but ideally we would either have a smaller television or a larger console table for a more balanced scale. And if you all remember in our old house we had this beautiful navy sectional. I love the contrast and subtle pop of color that it gave to our space. But unfortunately we didn't have room for it here in our rental. So what I decided to do was put the center section in storage and then connect the two end pieces to create one long sofa. And this is great because it can still fit a lot of people and we have plenty of room for traffic flow. But it's a way that we can utilize our old furniture in this more long and narrow room layout. So now that the main sofa was in here I wanted to add some more seating to set this space up for conversation and games. So we brought in these faux leather swivel chairs and we had these in our upstairs game room previously. And these were a home goods find and I've always wanted to use these in the same space as our navy sofa because blue and orange are opposite each other on the color wheel. So even though these pieces are more muted down versions of blue and orange they still complement each other really well. Next we brought in our coffee table and I just love the modern lines on this piece and how it contrasts against our more traditional sofa. It's also perfect for this long and narrow space. And then lastly I wanted to add some seating on the other side of the tv without blocking traffic flow. So this oversized swivel reading chair fit in here perfectly. It just helps to round out the room and adds additional seating but leaves plenty of room to enter and exit the space. So now that we had all of our main furniture pieces moved in I wanted to figure out something to add some more height to this blank white wall just to soften the look of it and distract from the boxy tv. I also wanted something to hide this outlet and cord situation so I figured a large tree would be perfect. So I headed off to one of my favorite local nurseries here in Phoenix, the plant stand. And if you missed it I actually came here for my garden with me video and I picked out a bunch of outdoor plants but this time I wanted to wander through the greenhouses to see if I could find anything that would look good in our indoor space. And I ended up coming across these seven foot tall Audrey ficus trees and they were on a flash sale for only $40 which was an insane deal for a tree this size. I almost bought two of them just because the deal was so good but then I remembered I'd be lucky if I could just fit one of these into my car. And luckily she just barely fit so once I got her home I watered her and I washed off all her leaves just to get rid of any dirt dust or potential pests. So next I grabbed this oversized planter that I found for $25 at Tractor Supply Co and I think in the future I'll try to DIY a more rustic darker planter for some contrast but this one works well for now. I really like the ridge details on it and once I brought this tree inside it definitely was a lot larger than I thought it would be but it worked out because I needed something with some height to anchor this wall and this tree definitely did the trick. And I love the look of the foliage on this Audrey ficus and since this was my first real indoor tree I wanted to make sure that she got plenty of light so I bought this affordable extendable grow light on Amazon and she's in a pretty sunny spot in this home but I figured this would be good to supplement here and there when needed. I definitely won't keep it in here permanently but it'll be nice to have if she's looking a little sad or maybe on a cloudy stretch where not a lot of light comes into the house. This tree definitely helps to give off that casual natural feel by bringing the outdoors in and another way I like to get that look in my space is by layering in natural materials so things like wood, linen, clay, marble, things like that. So this distressed wood stool definitely helps to do that and it'll be a perfect spot to set a drink down which helps to make this little reading nook aesthetic and cozy. And another thing that I always like to do with this reading chair to add some softness and dimension is layer a throw blanket and pillow on top and since this is such a bright piece I wanted to add some contrast and tie the room together. So a perfect way to do that is by using a throw that is the same color as our sofa. Not only does this help tie the color palette of this space together but the subtle waffle pattern on this blanket just helps to add some texture and interest. It also picks up some of those darker blue gray tones in our rug and then I also wanted to tie in the warm cognac color of our faux leather swivel chairs so then I added in this leather pillow just to again get that subtle blue orange color wheel combo. So by tying in that cognac color this just helps the room to feel a lot more cohesive without being too matchy matchy and also the distressed leather also helps to add a beautiful subtle texture and warmth to this corner. And the last thing this area was needing was a piece of artwork and artwork can really help to set the tone for your space. I wanted this room to feel very calm and relaxed so I decided to use this black and white beach photo that I took in California and this will definitely help to add to that natural calming vibe that I'm going for in this space. And this was just a poster print that I ordered online and put in a cheap poster frame that I found at Target so that can definitely be a more affordable way to display a large piece of statement art in a space. I'm really loving how this cozy reading nook looks. It's the perfect spot to just relax and curl up with a book. So now that that side of the wall is all furnished and styled we need to add something on the other side of the tv to balance out the weight on this wall. So I just needed something else that would provide a similar height to the tree so I brought in this rustic ladder and I actually found this at HomeGoods a while back and I love how it's made out of reclaimed wood and it just gives off the look like it's been salvaged from somewhere like the Mediterranean. So that helps to add the height that I was looking for but I also wanted to add in another pop of greenery so I brought in this plant stand so I could display some smaller potted plants and I found this rustic handled terracotta planter at HomeGoods for $15 and I love the old world feel that it has to it. And then when I was checking out the Lowe's clearance rack I found this Pothos on sale for $6 and I knew that I had to save her. She did get a couple of burn marks from me leaving her in my car while I ran a errand but I think that we could get her back to her old self. And for now I'm just keeping the plants in their original pots so that I can easily take them outside to water them but I probably will end up repotting them both eventually. So now I feel like this focal wall appears a lot more balanced and I'm happy with how it looks so it's time to add in a couple of aesthetic practical details and now that we have those warm leather tones and the chairs and the pillow I decided to bring in these faux suede stitched storage bins for additional hidden storage underneath our coffee table that still ties into the rest of the space and we don't want our space to feel too matchy matchy so you can see that the warm cognac undertone is distributed throughout the space but each piece still slightly differs from each other color-wise and next I wanted to add in some simple styling to our coffee table I like to have most of the table surface open so I typically just pop a little tray in the corner so that we can still use our table and I found this tray at an antique store called Golden Oldies back in North Carolina and it's perfect for styling a little vase inside for a rustic moment and I love that you can also place coasters or remotes in here for a more tidy and organized feel this just helps to add some depth to the center of the room and it also juxtaposes all of the symmetry and repetition that we have going on and the last thing that this space needed was some pillows to help break up the visual boxiness of that long dark sofa so I've mentioned before that when I'm styling pillows I usually like to use a contrasting color to the sofa I feel like that just looks really visually pleasing and helps the pillows to have a nice crisp pop so typically I like to style pillows in groups of three with one solid color one patterned pillow and then one subtle pattern or a texture and that's just a foolproof combo that always looks cozy and balanced so this was the space that we started with just a long narrow space that felt kind of cold and empty and this is what we were able to do to it just by adding some furniture and styling techniques and I love the warmth that this space has with all the cognac accents and how we incorporated things like natural greenery landscape artwork and earthy materials to give the space that calm organic feeling that I was going for all right everyone that about wraps up this living room makeover I hope you guys enjoyed it if you did please don't forget to give this video a thumbs up it really does help to support my channel and be sure that you're subscribed because there's a lot more home decorating content coming and you don't want to miss it so I just want to thank you all so much for watching this video I hope you have a wonderful week and I will see you guys in my next one bye