reader submissions

Before & After: A White & Bright Living Room

published May 27, 2016
We independently select these products—if you buy from one of our links, we may earn a commission. All prices were accurate at the time of publishing.
Living room with gray armchair, white coffee table, patterned rug, and stone fireplace with deer artwork.

Aniko’s living room certainly wasn’t awful, but it didn’t feel like her. With a little white paint, some stylish DIY action and an excellent pink rug she totally lightened up the space and gave it a ton of character.

From Aniko: Our poor little family room went through multiple stages since we’ve lived in the house. I tried decorating it many different ways, but we haven’t done any major projects in the room. It’s a fairly small room and when we moved in years ago, we purchased a huge media center that just made it almost impossible to decorate the room the way I wanted. So that media center had to go. We also had a yellow-ish tone on the walls which did not help the room either. So I decided to take the plunge and redo our family room (on a budget).

We painted the walls Ultra white to brighten the space up, and we DIYed fabulous built-in shelves around our fireplace. We also painted our brick fireplace to white. The beautiful white built-ins and the white fireplace alone transformed this room to be a whole new airy space. I added lots textures, layers and of course, pop of colors to create a cozy, eclectic room.

Thank you, Aniko! You can see more photos on Aniko’s blog Place of My Taste.