How we achieved our dream cosy living room - through art and warmth

172

Beach Resort
HDB (Resale)
~1,000 sqft
3 br
Couple Living

Our living room is done up quite simply yet tastefully, and we achieved this by having very conscious and thoughtful design decisions and details. Over here, you can see that the main wall piece we have (and we do love our wall pieces!) is this singular red item. This is actually just a simple table runner that we bought in India, and it's made of recycled sarees. I bought it for less than 10 SGD, but had it framed, and it thus, it looks a lot more fanciful than it actually is.
As you can see - adding that piece of art (previous image), really spices up the space quite effectively. This is the before photo of our living room space before we added any art piece on the wall. Our sofa is from Castlery - and we chose this leather sofa as we think it's easier to maintain than fabric, and traps hair, fur, dust, crumbs less as well. We also love how it retains the coolness of the AC, and is so smooth to sit down and rest on. We added an ottoman so we can lay on it comfortably and are thinking of buying a third piece to expand the size. That's another reason we love this sofa - it's so buildable!
Although we didn't break down any bedrooms to expand our space (something many of our friends do), what we did instead was hacked into the guest room, to create a small wall niche. This way, we could hide all the TV wires and cables behind this false wall, we could have a built-in niche cabinet, and we didn't have to compromise any more living areas. Although the guest room is a little bit smaller, it's still big enough to be used as a bedroom, and we gave ourselves a bit more space in the living room. This is one of our best design decisions so far!
We invested in a sleek and expensive entertainment system from Samsung. We knew that we wanted our house to look seamless and having visible wires was a big no-no for us. Since we already paid to hack the wall, we decided that the only TV that works for us is the famous Samsung The Frame (in 65"), as it has a wooden frame that looks cohesive with the rest of our home decor, and the matte finishing allows it to blend so well with our home, and not look too jarring.
We have some subwoofers hidden behind the living room cabinets, and due to our rattan panels, it allows the sound to flow through, while hiding the unsightly tech pieces! We love this little secret of ours too. Our wall niche is also a bit more textured than the rest of the walls. If you can notice, the wall niche is just a bit darker (that's not the shadows), and it's because it was painted with lime wash paint - we chose Calce from the brand Kalkitir, and exclusively sold by Aratamete!
A close up of the magazine you can see from the above picture! We were featured on two magazines - SquareRooms Magazine and Key To Your Home 2024.
This is also the only "painting" or photo there is of us in the house - a painting of us on a piece of wood from the Philippines! Gifted by my best friends from Manila.
- #livingroominspiration
To jazz up our sofa, we also like combining different looking cushions, pillows, and of different textures as well. Over here, we have some leather pillows, and some cotton/fabric ones as well. I chose pops of yellow, as they stand brightly against the browns. Our blinds are from Aratamete and I like how it diffuses the light but still offers us privacy (which is so important because we live on the second floor).
Finally, our living room lights are all made up of these miniature 4" lights from Sol Luminaire. We built them into our wooden beams and they are adjustable with a dim-to-warm feature. I think such warm lights bring out the difference and really offer us a cosy atmosphere.