How To Decorate A Family Room

Hi, I'm Adrienne Chinn. I'm an interior designer based in London, England. Today, I'm going to talk to you about an aspect of interior design.

Today, we're going to look at a family room. Family rooms are obviously the room where the whole family gathers, watches TV, kids are doing studies at a desk, somebody's reading a newspaper, so they need to be very comfortable multipurpose rooms. And what I've chosen here are a lot of very hardwearing fabrics but soft and comfortable fabrics in room that I think would be very practical and will have quite a lot of longevity to it for the whole family.

So starting off, I've chosen a wide plank wood floor here with the gray tone to it. This is oak which has a great finish which is quite nice and the wide planks, I think, always look very nice in a room. This is an engineered floor so if you wanted to put underfloor heating under this floor, you could.

It wouldn't buckle and an engineered floor has several layers of wood between the top solid layer of wood which keeps the wood from bending when heat is underneath it. What I've done for the walls is I've chosen this textural wall covering. This is a linen, this is actual linen, but it's made as a wall covering so that gives a very nice element of texture to the walls and tones very nicely with your floor.

I would keep all the woodwork a very nice soft white colour to keep it nice and fresh in the room. And with regards to the sofa which is going to be obviously one of the central features of the room, I've chosen this very tough woven cotton. It's a nice gray.

It's very tough, it has a nice sheen to it and it's very soft as well. So, I've chosen this to be on your sofa. You might have a sectional sofa if it's a big room or you might have two sofas, two smaller sofas next to each other opposite each other, and on that, I've put this cushion which is in the tone that works with this.

It's kind of this warm gray colour with this very, I would say, it's a bright red, so much of the pillar box red that we've got to add a bit of accent colour and then I've put some other cushions on the sofa in a fabric to tone with red as your accent. On the curtains in order to soften the room a bit, I've chosen this wool fabric. This is a woven wool.

It's not pricky or anything, it's like a satin, wool sateen, I should call it, and it has a woven-in pattern of red leaves which brings in the accent colour that I've put on the sofa so that would be lovely as curtains or blinds on the window. And then over here as an accent chair, a nice big comfortable armchair perhaps, we've got this lovely plaid that works with the scheme. All the colours are working nicely together.

Again, we have this very tomato-ey red colour coming in as an accent and possibly you might have another chair in there, smaller chair or a stool or an ottoman and I've just chosen a very neutral gray brushed cotton that would just tone with the whole scheme. So what we've got here is a very easy scheme to work with. The walls are kept light with this nice light linen with the white trim and the floor is very hardwearing.

You might want to put a bit of a rug down there to warm things up a bit and we've got the rest of the scheme which has your plaids a little bit of the floral and the solid stair pulling it all together. If you want some further information or some ideas about interiors, you might want to have a look at my book which is called The Home Decorator's Colour and Texture Sourcebook. You can buy that on my website at www.adriennechinn.co.uk