APT - Living Room — APT La Fayette

I imagined lazy days on the couch with a book, friends laying by the fireplace on brisk autumn evenings, Sunday naps and afternoon tea. If the kitchen were the stomach of the home, I imagine the living room to be the voice, it’s made for good conversation or just simply…connection.

In my opinion, that’s what I think makes a for a good living room: spaces to sit, in places where people can connect, with words or not. Decisions for everything else in the room distilled down to these two things:

Choose things that support this feeling of comfort, safety and peacefulness.
Since the living room is essentially blank walls and a floor, it is a canvas on which to express our own ideas on beauty.

BEFORE - looking toward the fireplace

Looking toward the kitchen where the wall was removed

Looking toward the kitchen and front door, where walls were removed

Looking from dining room to living room, the wall was removed

DURING - after the wall between the dining and living room was removed

Looking towards the fireplace

After the walls were removed, looking towards the kitchen in progress

Apart from opening up the entire space by removing as many walls as I could, I chose to leave much of it untouched. I chose not to fix the century-old hardwood floors, instead just laying on a coat of satin varnish to protect their imperfect charm. The walls were primed white, and I liked it, so left it neutral. The couch was placed dividing the living room and dining room to create a more intimate area surrounding the fireplace, which was put back into working condition.

I chose things that had meaning to me, or things that inspired me to fill the rest of the room: a rug from my travels to Turkey, a bowl from my favourite Parisian ceramicist holding nuts with a nutcracker in the shape of a lady’s legs found at a flea market. Crystals scatter the space, stacks of beautiful books, some sentimental ones, stacks of firewood that I love the texture of (sometimes with moss clinging to them). There are baskets of shawls and blankets for cold nights, candles to fill the room with lush scents, and brocante finds like sea coral and an antique fountain from Marrakech that lays on the floor.

The space is a treasure trove of things that make me smile…as I believe it should be in our sanctuaries. To choose beauty that means something to us, things that remind us to pause for a tiny moment in between what we were doing and what still needs to be done. It’s choosing to surround ourselves with this deep beauty that we cannot help but pause for…that’s what makes a beautiful living room, a beautiful voice.