If you're anything like me, you like your home to feel like your sanctuary; a place that truly reflects your personal style and is a refuge from the bustling world outside. The living room, often considered the heart of the home, plays a crucial role in achieving this balance. Over the past two years in our home, I've strived to personalize our space while maintaining functionality. Transitional design emerged as the ideal solution, offering a blend of style and practicality. Defined by its fusion of traditional and contemporary elements, it creates a timeless and harmonious aesthetic with clean lines, neutral color palettes, and a mix of classic and modern furnishings and decor. In this blog post, we explore our proven process of crafting your transitional living room design from Pinterest boards to furniture selection and everything in between.

Quick Links: Generating Transitional Living Room Ideas from Pinterest | Questions to ask yourself | Product Selection Tips | Mocking it up in Canva | Furniture Placement

Generating Transitional Living Room Ideas

Before I begin any design project for my home, I like to create a Pinterest board for the specific room I am designing and pin everything I love to that board. Don't hold back! The more ideas, the better. I know after I do this, it truly helps me narrow in on my exact style and that feeling I want my room to have. You want to look for commonalities among all of the photos you've pinned in order to find your style preferences. If you aren't sure of where to start, search for things like "transitional living room" or "modern transitional home", etc. to see more relevant content. Below is an example of what one of my boards might look like. Pay attention to tones, textures, pillow combinations, and furniture/accessory placement. 

Here are some questions to ask yourself:

1. What's my budget? This will expand or narrow your search options depending on the max spend you have in mind.

2. Do I need to re-paint? If so, what paint colors am I seeing that I love? Consider that neutral palette. There are great examples of paint colors used in transitional homes allllll over Pinterest, so find a room you like and mimic it!

3. What type of furniture am I looking to incorporate and how much space do I have for it? Do you need a sectional? Some lounge chairs? A small round table for coffee and candles or a big square one for game nights?

4. If there are other parts of your home that are finished that you'd like to tie-in with this new space, consider those. Think: Colors, textures, furniture materials!

5. How do you use this space? Do you host a lot? This will also dictate your furniture selection and room layout - remember, keep things functional!

Building your living room from the ground up: Product Selection

• Pick your biggest furniture pieces first. The color, pattern and size of these pieces definitely dictate what else will be added to the space. This is typically your sofa and/or lounge chairs.
• Pick a coffee table that complements these nicely. Have a simple linen sofa? Bring in some warmth and texture into your transitional living room design with a solid wood coffee table.
• Now, ground the area with a rug that ties the two together. Transitional living room design often includes a lot of earthy tones that naturally complement each other, so this part should be easy! Personally, since our walls are white and our sofas are ivory linen, I like to warm things up so I typically opt for darker, deeper tones.
• Blank walls? Incorporate family photos or framed landscape art that ties in with the colors of your rug and decor. This really brings everything together!
• Have room for plants? I definitely do not have a green thumb, so we use artificial plants around here like this Costco Olive Tree. I will say, the right faux plants will give off the same organic feeling of incorporating a real one, without the added chore of taking care of it!
• Accessories! One of the biggest difference-makers in a nicely decorated living space would be the added decorative elements that reflect your personal taste. If I ever need ideas on how to add character to my space, I look at @amberinteriors or @mcgeeandco on Instagram. They have amazing inspo when it comes to accessorizing a coffee table, selecting pillow combinations, draping blankets over a couch, etc. They've truly perfected the cozy, lived-in look of a common space. While transitional furniture is more streamlined and simplistic, you can have more fun and incorporate some funk with your decor pieces.

Mocking it Up

Now that you've cultivated the perfect image in your mind of how you want your space to come together, you can begin your product search. I've found that starting the process with a product search can be overwhelming if you don't begin with a Pinterest board first. There are countless amazing home decor stores and millions of beautiful products that can definitely confuse you if you aren't completely sure of your style.

After I conduct this search and hone in on items I love, I open up Canva and use the Powerpoint presentation template for it's wide configuration. I then drag any product images in, remove the backgrounds, and start to build my room. The more detail you provide, the better. If your room has windows or decorative trim, try adding those into your mock-up so you can TRULY get a feel for what it will look like. See an example of my living room mock-up below!

From Mock-up to Placement

After getting your mock-up to a place that you are satisfied with and that feeling is just right, you are ready to order your pieces and place them in your space. Make sure to take measurements and blue-tape your room to ensure that all of the furniture pieces will fit seamlessly into your space. You may have to make adjustments and swap out your selections for other products. Ours is still very much a work in progress, but here is where we are at so far: