How to design a warm and colourful family room

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Hello, I'm Stephanie Barba Mendoza.

I'm an interior designer

and today I will be putting a scheme together

for a family room.

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The room we'll be creating a scheme for

is adjacent to the garden, so it will have

a lot of natural light coming from the windows

and it will be a room that will be used a lot by the family.

This room has to be warm and cozy, comfortable

but also interesting because the client is a vibrant person

so color and pattern needs to be included.

This room must have really comfortable furniture,

an ottoman instead of a coffee table

or that acts as a coffee table

so you can also put your feet up

and some side drinks tables for everybody to have somewhere

to put their cup of tea or their drink.

When you're building a scheme,

for me, it's important to mix your patterns,

have small scale with large scale florals with geometrics.

Let's not forget about the trims and adding a piping

or a fringe to a cushion of the seat of a sofa, for example,

on your leading edge of a curtain.

Adding those details makes each piece so much more special.

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We're going to start this scheme with a wallpaper.

This is a wallpaper by Excel

and it depicts tiles of the Ottoman era, the 16th century.

But for this room, it wouldn't be nice to have tiles

'cause it will make it very cold.

So having this wallpaper, it's perfect.

The wallpaper will be placed in all four walls

and they are able to customize, depending on your walls

and place the pattern specifically

so that you can reach the whole room

as if it was just made for that room.

The next fabric is this lovely stripe by Schumacher.

It is actually embroidered

and the whole sofa will be covered in this fabric.

And I want to put a little trim at the bottom

from Samuel & Sons to add a bit of interest.

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Together with this fabric,

we need a bit of pattern, some cushions.

So I picked this one from Soane,

this floral with this beautiful trim from Clarence House

and another one from Soane which is another floral,

but slightly different.

It's nice to combine stripes with florals

and use different scales.

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The next fabric is from Soane

and it will be used for the ottoman.

It's a woven fabric with a geometric pattern.

It's quite forgiving if you have any stains

or you're using it as a food stool or have drinks on a tray.

It's really important for an ottoman.

This is going against a stripe.

Using a geometric, it's always a good idea

to introduce with the florals and the stripes.

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We're having some Bonacina chairs

in this rattan natural color.

For the cushion seat,

we're using this lovely fabric from Turnell & Gigon

which is lightly quilted, and it has these tiny bits of blue

that link to the sofa fabric and the ottoman.

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And with that, we are going to have this cushion.

This fabric is also from Turnell & Gigon and it has

this really beautifully embroidered floral pattern.

It's surrounded by a lot of white for a cushion.

This pattern perhaps will just be placed in the middle

and the rest will be white, so they have somewhere to rest.

We're using these Samuel & Sons trim to go around it.

That picks up as well, the blue theme.

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We have a blue lacquered desk paired with a desk chair

upholstered in this lovely red fabric

by Nicky Haslam from Turnell & Gigon.

It's important to bring a little bit of the red as well

because we've had a lot of blue going on.

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We have a lot of blue and a lot of red.

So now we want to pick up a little bit of the green as well.

So for the antique chair, we're gonna use this linen

just a plain green linen.

It's important to bring some plain fabrics, as well,

into a busy scheme.

And we're having this little trim

at the seams of the cushion and as a contrast.

And for the scattered cushion,

we have this fern fabric from Soane

with a little trim as well from Samuel & Sons.

That's our green moment.

One of the walls is full of French doors

so it's important to have window treatments.

In this case, we chose this lovely linen

which is very textured by MM Design [indistinct].

And so that is not so plain,

we wanna add a little bit of a trim at the edge.

The leading trim, and this is from Samuel & Sons.

So when they close the curtains,

it will be mostly the white linen fabric

but you'll see a little bit of a edge, which is quite sweet.

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To finish our scheme, we have a couple of table lamps

on either side of the fireplace.

They are quite large, red and green ceramic.

So we thought we'll have these lampshades

that are quite big in this fabric from Schumacher.

And I really like it when the shades are slightly gathered

because it makes them look softer.

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Just like we have different textures

and pattern skills in fabrics,

it's also important to use different kinds of materials

like high-gloss lacquer, ceramic, plaster,

a bit of metal, brass, maybe for your curtains.

The use of different materials and textures

will help your scheme look and feel more considered.

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