Interior Designer Fixes 5 Peoples' Living Rooms

[paper ripping]

This one's gonna be a winner, I promise.

Very sleek, very sexy, very cool.

We're gonna paint all walls and all ceilings.

I'm Darren Jett.

Here are five living rooms

and I'm going to give advice on how to spruce them up.

[upbeat music]

The first things that I notice

about these living rooms is that they're all white.

I am seeing a lot of clutter

some interesting furniture arrangements.

Looks like we might have some children involved

which will be a fun challenge.

[calm music]

All right, so here is Carrie and Carrie's living room.

Carrie tells us that she's a mom

of two young kids and they have two living rooms

in the house and she wants this to be the adult room.

I would encourage her to go

in a direction that pulls in a bit of Rose Uniacke's design.

She mixes a lot

of these really beautiful sofas with the rolled arm

but next to it might be an antique wood table.

This room honestly just needs some life to it.

You know, she has a lot of really, really good essentials

like the bones are there.

I don't see a coffee table right here.

There's no side table over here.

There's no lamp.

If this is an adult room

let's make it an adult focused room.

Why don't we have a sort of

bar area over here in this corner kind of tucked away.

Maybe it has like some cool wheels

or something that can be wheeled around.

Maybe it's a brass table.

There's actually an outlet right here, so it's kind of

the perfect place to even add a lamp that goes

on top, you know, and when it's stationary

it has a light on it and at nighttime that can be

on a dimmer and you get a little bit of ambiance

in that corner of the room that's currently non-functioning.

Currently, the windows are completely bare.

In a room where you are entertaining with other adults

especially in the evening, imagine if the lights are off

what that starts to look like.

You can start to see your reflection.

It feels kind of eerie.

An easy solution.

Just kind of the first step to tackle that

and to also make the room softer would be to add drapery.

I would hang a rod pretty high up

on all of these windows like so

and I would have that rod go out beyond the window.

That way whenever you have curtains

they can be something like this.

Whenever they're fully opened, they go floor

to ceiling and they go left and right

of the window to make the window just feel a bit larger.

I think what she needs to do for the color,

I actually quite like the sort of neutral that she's having.

If Carrie was interested in going a little bit further

I might do something that has a bit of a plaster effect.

Maybe it's like a lime wash

on the wall that just gives a little bit

of life to everything so it doesn't feel so flat and so new.

You know, she has this great area right here.

I think this is probably her front door

or her front door is right here

and this is probably where they walk into the living room.

Let's hang some art here.

Maybe over the bar we have two smaller pieces like this.

Something that's a bit more intimate

and then you kind of like walk up

to it and you feel like you have to engage with it.

Carrie also said

that she's gonna use this room to watch television.

She's wanting to put the TV up here.

I'm not someone who is a proponent

of a television over a fireplace

but if that's the only place for things, then so be it.

No matter where a TV goes

especially in in a room where you're entertaining

where you're gonna have drinks

where you might serve hors d'oeuvres or something like that

you're not gonna have the TV on all the time.

I would suggest to Carrie doing something where

we can actually have another rod up here

and maybe we hang a sort of tapestry.

Whenever it's closed,

it gives a bit of texture in life to, you know,

the space above the fireplace.

If she's leaning into this kind of off-white sort

of chalky world, I think could be really, really quite nice.

I would say, you know

do some sort of natural rug underfoot.

You know, maybe it's something that's more

of a jute or a hemp or a sisal.

It just creates a bit of texture underfoot.

So that's Carrie and we're giving her a living room

that is a great place to entertain.

[moderate groove music]

So here we have Carol.

She loves to entertain with a big group of people

and she has a beautiful living room to do just that.

She's come to us and she's like, you know, my furniture

it's a bit stiff, have this beautiful living room

but we never use this space at all.

And I love to have people over,

but it's just not comfortable.

It's not inviting.

She also said that there's a space next door that's more

of like a dining area and the flow is just not good.

So what we gotta do, we gotta attack all of this.

Carol has this big sofa right here, this very boxy.

It has these arms that come out,

kind of blocks you from moving around,

and she has these really big chairs that do the same thing.

[paper ripping]

What I would like to do is to really center a

new seating arrangement around that fireplace.

I think what we can do is kind of create a sort

of sofa moment that does something like so.

These kind of sofas, you know, you see them every now

and then, sort of Kagan inspired form.

Perhaps this really helps with creating a more

inviting space, right When you walk in the door

you see this form that kind of takes you around almost

like an arm, you know, kind of giving you a hug.

Not to sound too cheesy.

What I would do is, you know,

create a sort of lamp over here, have the coffee table

more or less where it is right now,

directly in front of the fireplace

and then have a much softer chair.

I would have another lamp sort of flanking this

chair that kind of goes along

with this sort of flanking the fireplace.

We have this French modern situation going

on down here in the furniture.

I would love to combat that a little bit.

Maybe we do a sort of Italian Murano glass chandelier.

Maybe it's a sort of greenish color or maybe it's kind

of pink blown glass that sort of hangs from the ceiling.

I would have some really cool little shades on it.

Maybe they're shirt fabric to just give a little bit

of tradition.

Or maybe we add some fabric on this railing

up here and just kind of soften that a bit.

Just give a little bit of drama.

I think we should probably add another lamp

on this side of the sofa, and maybe we add

like a kind of small like little martini cocktail table

off to the side of the sofa.

I think a space like this could really be much

more impactful if we weren't afraid of color.

We're gonna paint all walls and all ceilings.

I would go in a world that's a bit more terracotta.

I want rich, I want moody, I want drama.

You know, this architecture, it's quite imposing in a way

and if we do something that's a bit warmer

and a bit richer and darker frankly,

it'll just make it feel a bit more intimate.

When you have something that's very light and white

sometimes it can just feel a little bit too big

and a little bit too impersonal.

I think we should think

about the sofa as being kind of an off white.

Maybe it's a slight kind of beige color that's still warm

but it's overall very light.

So everything on the floor is kind of light and everything

on the walls and above is a bit darker and a bit more moody.

So this is Carol.

I think we really gave her a nice update,

a nice refresh on what she had.

We got rid of her heavy boxy furniture,

gave her something more

of a serpentine kind of soft shape below.

Carol's gonna be throwing the most fabulous parties

in this living room, and you know

that I'm gonna be the last one to leave.

[upbeat music]

So here we have Brendan.

Brendan comes to us with a few things, a lot of clutter,

it looks like.

He's just trying to kind of declutter his life.

Everything just needs to have a home

and everything needs to have a place.

So what I love about this space is this really

cute little cat and I think everything else can go.

What I would do-

[paper ripping]

Is I wanna give him a sort

of seventies bachelor pad fantasy,

a little bit of a bigger sofa along this wall.

Okay, something with clean lines

maybe we do like a really kind of sexy, like black leather.

Let's give you some storage.

You clearly need some storage.

So let's try to maximize that.

Underneath the TV,

why don't we give you a credenza that runs pretty

much the full length or as much as we can possibly get.

Think about it almost being like a monolith flat panel.

Maybe it's all black, maybe it's stainless steel.

I wanna give you something that has a little bit of an edge.

I feel like Brendan,

you have some edge to you that I wanna pull out.

This desk situation-

[paper ripping]

Has got to go.

It looks like you have two levels on the desk.

You know, they make these things today that are really cool.

A lot of my clients really love them.

They're standing desks.

Maybe we lean into a bit of this high tech movement

you know, that was very prominent in the seventies

championed by people like Joe Dorso.

He used office furniture

and medical furniture for actual living spaces.

So maybe next

to your beautiful new sofa that we're gonna get you

you've actually have sort of cube, you know

it's like a filing cabinet,

stainless steel again

like very sleek, very sexy, very cool.

But of course it gives you everything that you

need to get that stuff out of the way.

Let's give you a nice coffee table

in the middle of the space too.

You know, they have coffee tables now that have drawers.

I am suggesting a more minimalist route based

upon the space.

Minimalism means clean.

Minimalism means not fussy, things being more monotone.

If you go to the AD archives, you'll see a lot

of these kind of seventies inspired apartments

and a lot of them are white.

They're very minimal, but there is still a newness

to them that I want to pull from for Brendan.

He does have this really great kind

of French door situation that goes

out to a back patio, which is really quite nice,

lets in a ton of natural light.

I think you're gonna use this outdoor patio a ton.

I certainly would.

I don't want these things blocking my way.

Let's just do curtains on a very, very simple track

mounted as high as possible.

Wall to wall.

It'll make this window, honestly feel

like it's a full window wall, which is really cool.

And that's Brendan.

We gave him a very cool, very minimalist bachelor pad

and we did it all based on his cat.

[moderate groove music]

We have Dan, and Dan has one adorable little tot right here

and another one on the way.

The kids have kind of taken over the living room

and he's really just trying to figure out

a way where the kids' things don't always spill

out into the space.

[paper ripping]

I think with Dan

the solution is gonna have to be pretty simple.

There are a ton of toys

and I'm sure the little kid loves playing, loves his life.

Dan probably put this together kind of

in a rush and things have just accumulated over time.

That's totally fine.

That happens in every family.

There's a sort of cart right here that has some books.

It feels a bit temporary to me

kind of serving as a sort of side table situation.

And we also have a bookcase right here

which I like the idea of that bookcase.

But maybe there's a way we can combine these two things

into something that feels more permanent.

Why don't we do a sort

of bookcase situation along this long wall?

Something that has some storage

along the bottom would be fantastic.

You know, think about like a kind of cabinet

below that's closed and you could actually have some

of the toys kind of live in there, you know,

and whenever he wants to use them, you can pull them out.

And then think about shelves up

at the top where we could have, you know, books,

we could have children's books,

we can have photos of the kid as he gets older.

What I would also do, because we're sort of creating a sort

of library kind of play moment over here

I would move a singular chair by this bookcase.

You know, maybe it has like a nice lamp aside of it.

And then what I would do

I would move the larger sofa underneath the window

something that's a bit of a simpler profile, not so heavy

so that you have a focal point

with a nice window and with a nice sofa underneath.

Maybe it's something that can be slip covered.

And if an accident happens, which it does in life

then you can take it off, put it in the wash, it'll be fine.

You put it back on and it's like nothing ever happened.

Add some simple drapery again, doing a long rod high

up to the ceiling, curtains that come down.

Something very simple, very effective, just to make more

of a focal point for more adult situations.

[paper ripping]

Right now, Dan has this rug.

The rug is just, it's really really colorful

and I can just imagine like, you know,

some of these toys landing on here, like a Lego block

and we forget to clean it up at the end of the day.

If we can keep it neutral

then all of these other things up here

they don't cause so much visual headache.

So that's Dan, and we have created a living room

for him where his children can have their things

kind of tucked away and everything is a neutral base.

So there's not a lot of cacophony that happens.

[upbeat techno music]

Here we have Mona.

Mona is really giving a lot of energy right now

but her space over here unfortunately is not.

So we have to make the space match Mona.

This is her studio space.

She lives, works, sleeps all of that in one space.

So-

[paper ripping]

We have to soften up the space.

It's just way too stark.

So let's just add some very, very very

sheer curtains right here.

[paper ripping]

I would really like to take advantage

of these big windows right here

by having a nice big table like this.

She has a very small sofa

which I think is kind of a nice place to put the sofa.

But I think what we could do is make it a little bit bigger.

Let's get you a very comfortable daybed.

You know, we can do something where it is basically

a full size mattress.

Maybe it has some storage underneath.

You know, you can pop it open.

You can like access your shoes or you know

baskets or something underneath.

By doing things like this where we have the bed

and the sofa do double duty

we're able to give her much more space

in this area for things like yoga and her exercising.

She probably has a dresser over here kind of tucked

in this zone, or a nice lamp or two on there.

Maybe she has some floating shelves

above that for all of her books.

And she has her table desk right

by the light so that when she's working she

can have that beautiful light coming in.

Maybe the rug could fill the space a bit more.

[paper ripping]

Maybe we think about, you know,

this is such a funny shaped apartment.

We do the idea of having that offset rug that really

creates one whole zone.

I would definitely say if you have a unique layout

like this, if you can explore a custom rug.

Look it's a very challenging apartment to design.

It has an interesting shape.

It's a very small space.

So that's Mona in her challenging studio apartment.

I hope we gave her what she asked for

which was a bed and a living area.

And I hope that she's dancing this much when she walks

through the door.

So a living room can have so many different uses.

People watch TV in their living room.

People eat in their living room.

People have their children playing games.

They have people over having cocktails.

A living room really is that multifunction room.

And I hope today we've been able to address all

of those things.