Room sets are a great way to get an idea of how colours go together, or how they might work in your own rooms without actually doing the hard work of decorating. And they’re also somewhere where you’ll find me drooling over them at the home shows, such as Grand Designs Live. At the show earlier this year, the room sets were, shall we say, provocative and often a bit marmite. The rich in colour and pattern bedroom, which I shared a while back emphasises that point, I think.
Today’s room set, a living room, is also bit more out there than those at the Ideal Home Show, which are generally (but not always) more traditional. Grand Designs Live has it’s own USP which in some ways is a bit more edgy and encourages bolder decoration, with colour - or dark walls in this case, and soft furnishings that really have some zing.
And when they said citrus, they really meant it.
Yes, orange, yellow and green mixed with the grey - that has citrus covered doesn’t it? Or actually perhaps the colours are tangerine, lemon and lime to be more accurate. It’s the use of those three colours together, that gives it the zing, and makes you grateful for the grey. And it’s the grey that makes it work and pulls all the brighter colours together.
It’s the rug though that my eyes keep coming back to. The orange tub chairs have the zing, but the rug. Its pattern. My eyes are constantly trying to work it out. What is that pattern? What era does it come from? Is it a pattern, or just splodges? Do I like it, or am I just intrigued by it?
… so many questions, and for that last one I’m really not sure if I like it, think I should like it or don’t like it at all.
There is a touch of the seventies about it isn’t there?
And maybe that’s it, maybe it reminds me of something from our first home. I remember that the living room was yellow and orange at one point, and I’m certain we also had a grey and pink carpet much later on when the walls weren’t quite so citrus. Maybe this room has a bit of everything my mind’s eye remembers from my childhood home.
For me, the lights have a touch of murano about them too. And the matching vases.
Again that could just be reminiscing, as our first family holiday abroad was to Italy - how cosmopolitan were we?
The sofa though, now I have grey sofas (many of them) but back in my childhood there was an orange one (yes really) and one finished in brown velour, but I don’t remember anything grey.
What do you think of the room set, and what evokes memories of the decor in your childhood home?