advice on living room

[1990fran]

Hi all!

I am after some tips/advice if possible - I have attached a couple of pics of our living room. we have recently painted the back wall in 'intense truffle' Its not as purple as it looks in the pic - the other walls are gentle fawn, we wanted to do a feature wall with all the frames so wanted the colour of the wall to make frames stand out after we saw something similar in ikea!

we have a L shaped corner sofa on that wall, so it doesn't leave us loads of room for furniture etc, aside from coffee table, rocking chair & tv table. we have wooden shelves on walls, but I am struggling to find key pieces to make room less " dull" I love the shabby chic look so we have a few items of that type, and bought a couple of plants from ikea to bring a bit of colour. bought a couple new frames which still need pics in etc but still feels like it needs a little something!! any tips of help would be greatly appreciated!!

thank you x

Two things stand out for me -

One is that all your colours are very coordinated. This does give a nice, calming effect but it may also be creating the 'dull' feeling you are complaining of. Some consistency is good - for example I like things that can broadly be described as 'earthy tones' - so dark wood, bronze, soft green, dark red, sandy yellows etc. They all go together but are a mixture of colours. If you like purple, how about looking for some decorative items with stronger purples, mauves, and lavenders to give a bit of variety? Some greater variety in the heights of your ornaments would also provide greater interest.

Secondly- is your picture cloud finished how you would like it? It would look better if you re did it so that you have the same sized gap around each picture. A good way of planning it out is to draw around each picture onto some brown paper or wrapping paper and then stick that onto the wall with bluetac so that you can move it around until you are happy with the layout.

Also- no books!? I think they add instant interest and character to a room.

Thank you @Thistledew for your feedback I really appreciate it!
I like the idea of dark wood and soft greens, I am going to go on the hunt for some ornaments of that kind. Also I never thought about height of ornaments, all of mine are quite small except the candle holders, I think I might need to get some different cushions, the ones I have are a beige colour with flowers on and green but I think I may need some more bold cushions.

the picture frames are not exactly how Id like I think they need to be more spaced apart as you said, so that is something I am going to do for sure, they look to jumbled together.

with regards to books, I used to read loads! so I do have many books but they look a bit silly on the shelves so I think I need a book case I may get one I can affix to the wall or something

thank you again!!

I dream of having a fireplace in the living room. We even have already ordered exactly the same as here www.english-chimneypiece.co.uk on the third slide. Not a hundred friends told us that we are not completely normal. We have a small child, the second one on the way. And the fireplace screams to hurt them. Do you have experience in this matter? Is the fireplace safe for children or not?