Large lounge colour ideas and curtains

[cleo333]

Hi I’ve just moved house and have a large lounge room with double aspect windows . We are painting now ( stain block currently due to years of nicotene by previous owner) but need inspiration for wall colour and curtains . Could anyone share pics of your lounge walls and curtains to inspire me ?

Not much help I am afraid but I am interested in ideas too. All I can come up with for our large triple aspect lounge is Dulux Egyptian Cotton on the walls and a textured cream/ivory/beige full length curtains on the French doors and roller blinds on the other x 4 short windows. So many windows and fabric that if I keep it fairly neutral then I hopefully won’t get bored of it like I might say a pattern. Then I would add lots of different textures and colour in the furnishings.

What sort of a feel would you like the room to have - warm and cosy, bright and refreshing etc. How much light does the room get. I’ve just had my small flat redecorated.

I thought about what I’d like then did Pinterest search for cosy, calm living room, cosy green bedroom etc, and then when I found rooms I liked I narrowed it down to green living/bedroom ideas, curtains for green living room etc. I did the same for yellows. I ended up with a look I’m so happy with. I ordered a5 painted card samples of my shortlist of paints and moved them to different areas and looked at them when it was dark to see how it would look at night and dark winter days.

We like deep, saturated colours which don't appeal to everyone/might not be your thing @cleo333.

At our last house we painted the main living room F&B Olive (an archive colour, but still supplied). Despite a huge wall of windows, we didn't have curtains as it was a rural property and not overlooked/visible to passers-by.

When we bought our current cottage last Autumn we had a good idea what colour we wanted the dual aspect living room to be (Edward Bulmer Pompadour - an earthy red), so it was the first space we tackled after we'd done some building work (the cottage is a renovation project).

We are currently in the process of swapping the kitchen and living room and will keep the new kitchen walls Pompadour, but the new living room (former kitchen 😉) is going to be Edward Bulmer Nicaragua (pink). I've already bought fabric for the curtains - a deep yellow ochre with a floral pattern in colours which pick up the pink plus purple, green, pale blue, all of which are in our rug/cushions etc.

In both spaces we are colour-drenching - using the same colour for walls and joinery.

Before finalising the colours/fabric, we obtained samples and with the paint, I painted large rectangles of lining paper which I taped to each of the walls to see how the colour looked throughout the day/night.

We saved £££ on the curtain fabric by shopping for large remnants on ebay.

That sounds gorgeous do you have any pics ?

Here's a few pics of mine (current cottage and previous)....

If it’s large and light you can get away with almost anything.
What period is the property/what height are the ceilings?

What directions do the windows face? What kind of furniture do you have?

My tip is to find curtains you love first. You will have limited choice - they are expensive and you'll have fewer options in terms of what fits, fabrics you like, and so on. Paint is comparatively cheap and there are hundreds of options.

Always choose the big expensive things first - curtains, rug, sofa, furniture, even wallpaper. Then choose wall colour.

I agree with @Cheesystick, although as we had no plans to hang curtains at the living room windows of our last house (room with the green walls in above pics), we started with the rug. It was unusually coloured for a Persian rug with a bright olive green, cerise and turquoise amongst other colours. We used that as the inspiration for our wall colour, cushions etc.

Actually we started with a rug in our current home too. The striped kilim we chose has lots of bold colours including a deep yellow ochre - the one colour not represented in our cushion selection. After a lot of searching, I found the perfect curtain fabric that includes the yellow ochre and is an allover floral which wasn't really represented in our other choices 😁