This Living Room Makeover Has the Dreamiest Green Paint Color
When Rosaline Elbay was apartment hunting in New York, the fireplace, brick walls, and large windows in the living room of this Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, apartment won her over. And she painted the non-brick walls Farrow & Ball’s Calke Green after moving in.
“Coupled with the greenery outside … it can really feel like you aren’t in New York at all when you’re sitting there with the window open,” she says. Here’s how she made the living room feel like a cozy escape.
There’s a gallery wall above the fireplace.
After painting, Rosaline incorporated lots of artwork on the walls. When it comes to creating a gallery wall, she says there’s lots of trial and error involved. “I use a lot of Command strips and let things sit for a day or two before I know whether I’m happy.”
Her other advice? Vary up size and texture. Rosaline loves mixing sculpture with painting and prints. The spacing between objects also matters, she says, and she tried to strike the right balance of artwork in this room by using smaller finds for the gallery wall and one larger painting across the room.
“And don’t be afraid to get cheaper old frames and paint them!” Rosaline says. “I think painting some of the frames to match the walls — and also finding other variations of green — helped avoid the overall effect becoming too chaotic.”
The furniture layout was tricky but finally feels right.
One of the most challenging parts of decorating the living room was finding the right placement for the furniture. “The living room layout was tricky because of the positioning of the bathroom door, which makes it hard to utilize the whole space the way I’d like to,” Rosaline says. She tried about a dozen different iterations (one of which included a full-size dining table).
“The diagonal orientation was a fluke 3-in-the-morning idea that solved so many problems, and I think it finally gave the place its character,” Rosaline says.
The sofa tables were a DIY project.
Rosaline has several clever small-space solutions in the living room, like several wall-mount shelves and storage under the sofa, but she’s also particularly proud of her sofa tables, which were a DIY project.
“They were plain black TV tray tables, but I finished the tabletops in mother-of-pearl mosaic, which I grouted and sealed,” she says. “I’m still not sure how or why it worked so well, but I’ve always wanted to work with mosaic, so it felt like a soft little intro. I’m really proud to have my breakfast and coffee on them every morning.”
For more gorgeous green living rooms, check out these 50 dreamy spaces.
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