How to Decorate with Pops of Color {our living room}

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Thank you for all your sweet emails about my grandfather. He is still in the hospital and will most likely be there all week. It’s been a long couple weeks. Today I wanted to share my tips on how to decorate with pops of color. It’s actually a fairly simple process. Decorating can be overwhelming and for me, I try to keep things pretty simple. Throw pillows, frames, vases, throws and smaller decorative objects are my go-to items when sprucing up a room.

Not to throw us back to Christmas but here is our red and gold Christmas living room just a few weeks ago before we took down all the Christmas decorations.

As you can see, I left the fur rug and took everything else out of the room except for the furnishings and yellow magazine holder.

How did I decide on what colors to use? Well, I never have a plan. I just find a pillow or two that I love and work around those colors. I found these solid lavender Ralph Lauren throw pillows at HomeGoods and decided to use them as my pop of color. Our neutral sectional makes it so easy to swap throw pillows in and out.

What colors go with lavender? I decided that color variations of brown, grey and lavender along with neutral white accents would look pretty together.

I found these gorgeous vases at HomeGoods and the warm lavender, gold and brown color tones coordinated perfectly with the throw pillows. Do you notice that each of these vases are different textures? The one on the left is wooden, the middle is a combination of ribbed and gold metallic and the one of the right is a shiny ceramic. The secret to making these look nice together is the fact that they are all in the same color family (browns/gold/hints of lavender) but completely different textures (wood/metallic/ceramic).

I personally think they all play nicely together ;).

I left the fur rug from Christmas time because it’s still winter and the brown rug tones looked great with the rest of the colors in the room. Don’t be afraid to layer an area rug over wall to wall carpet. Our neutral berber carpet is a low pile flat rug so it’s fairly easy to throw down an area rug under the coffee table to anchor the space.

Related: Pink + Blue Living Room Decorating Ideas

The oversized ottoman coffee table from HomeGoods provides lots of space for a tray that keeps remotes, candles ( I don’t burn them, they are there for looks because the dog and kids would knock them over) and fresh flowers. I decided that a wooden tray (it’s in the brown family) coordinated with the wooden vase on the shelf along with the wooden tripod floor lamp.

My dad said, “why is there a pillow under the coffee table?” I told him there was a big hole under there and it didn’t look good!-ha. So I plopped a pillow underneath and turns out, it ended up being my son’s pillow he sits on when he plays with his little army guys. He thinks the ottoman is the navy base for his army guys ;). -ha

Decorating can be overwhelming especially when you are trying to coordinate multiple aspects in an entire room. So how do I keep it simple? First start with your throw pillows. Then find accents such as vases, picture frames, candles and small objects that are in the same color family as your “hero” or “pop of color” decorative accent. In my case, the lavender pillows were my “hero” or “pop of color.” As you can see, most every decorative accent is either lavender and/or in the brown color family. The trick is to mix in different textures. What are textures? For example, there are multiple variations of brown pillows in this room. So I found a suede tan pillow, a fur brown pillow and an embroidered brown geometric pillow.

Last summer we moved this industrial black cabinet (similar metal cabinet) in as our sofa table and so far, I am loving it. I used a tweed textured brown runner to soften the hard metal lines on the cabinet.  The lavender picture frames help carry over the lavender color behind the couch and the tripod table lamp helps give some height behind the couch.

Resources:

Walls Paint Color: Rainwash by Sherwin-Williams

Wide Pine Plank color: Extra White by Sherwin-Williams

Sectional

Floor Lamp

Table Lamp

Metal Industrial Cabinet (similar cabinet if ours is sold out)

You can find more of this room, decorating tips and tricks over on my article that I wrote for the HomeGoods blog. Decorating should be fun and my motto has always been, decorate with pieces you love. I wrote a post a while back about how I am not a professional interior designer, just a girl who wings it and decorates with what I love.  Working around one or two pieces that “sing” to you will help keep you organized when it comes to decorating. That concept helps me. Hopefully you got some ideas on how to decorate with pops of color and are inspired to spruce up your living room for winter.

Disclosure: I received gift cards from HomeGoods to pick out a few decorative accents. All opinions and words are 100% my own.