Eclectic Formal Living Room Interior Design

Eclectic Formal Living Room Interior Design

I’ve just moved into a Victorian home with a large foyer and entry covered in period wallpaper. I’d like to preserve the integrity of this, but am at a loss on how to decorate around it!

My Living Room

Neutral

We would like to remove the existing grass cloth wallpaper and paint, as we have cats and they are scratching the wallpaper. Also not crazy about the draperies.

The room is a blank slate! We do have one large piece of artwork that we cannot fit into our existing decor anywhere, as it is modern, that may be able to work in here?

Yes

Paint

No

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Hi! This is a Victorian home, and one of the challenges has been decorating around the very period room features in some places. The two adjacent rooms to this living room are a large foyer (this is shown with the green William Morris wallpaper just so you can get a feel of what I’m talking about), and the dining room (which is shown with the red toile paper). We hope to have this living room be a space that is a bit more modern without clashing with these other spaces. We have thought that maybe adding some French doors onto the pictured foyer opening may give the space some separation. Our vision for this living room is a space that does not have a tv (we have a family room/den for that), where we can be formal enough to have after dinner drinks with guests, but casual enough to have a family night playing board games, reading, or doing a puzzle. We want it to be a wow room, but still livable! We like the idea of a leather sofa maybe and some type of small table set up somewhere for games. I’m REALLY into that slate/colonial blue color everyone is using in their kitchens right now. Additionally, this home is near the beach, so elements of a beach vibe would not be out of place.

Also of note we have a baby, two teenagers, and multiple cats and a dog. While well try to keep the cats out (another reason for adding doors), they do scratch and we don’t want to get exorbitantly expensive sofas for this reason. They tend to stay away from low pile fabrics like microfiber suede and velvet, maybe leather. But absolutely no woven fabrics please!


Notes from client: "In the meantime, here are a bunch of photos of the room, surrounding rooms, and the floor plan (labeled “living room”). If I can’t fit them all in this email I’ll send a second. Don’t mind all of the random junk around, it’s just extra pieces of furniture and stuff from our old house which we don’t know what to do with. Additionally, I think I mentioned the wallpaper, which is like a grass cloth, and I don’t hate. But unfortunately we’ve found with cats, it serves as a very large scratching post! Draperies can also go, unless they feel they work somehow. Another thought I had, was perhaps we might want to put glass doors onto the doorway from foyer into this room (like the ones that you can see leading into the sunroom), to give some separation so as not to worry so much about clashing of styles?
The only other thing, is that we have a large piece of art (that I’ll also attach a photo of), from our old house, that really doesn’t go anywhere bc it’s modern, but maybe could be incorporated into the room. Hope this isn’t too many notes!"