Modern family rooms…what are they? A place to watch TV? A place for the kids to play games? A music room? A Lego storage garage?! There are loads of potential uses for a family room if you are lucky enough to have the space. Now that our kitchen reno is finished, I’m looking at the old dining room as the perfect space to create a lovely room that we can all enjoy.

Here is the room in question:

I love the light in this room and the interest that the bay window gives. When you open our front door you can see straight down the hallway into this room and out to the garden. So I’m conscious that while I want to create a modern family room that’s vibrant and lively, I also don’t want to do anything that’s going to jar too much with the rest of the house decor as it’s pretty much on display from the front door.

Colour Inspiration

I love a good rummage on Pinterest, this is one of the first ideas that I was drawn to:

I love the warm cosy vibes and the panelled wood wall behind the sofa. I wasn’t sure that Mr G was really up for putting wood panelling up on the wall though. I love the look of all kinds of panelling but I know that when it goes out of fashion in a few years it’ll be murder to get off our plasterboard walls! I got samples of different wood panel effect wallpaper – but I just didn’t really like any of them in the flesh.

Next I asked my kids (always my harshest critics!) what colour they thought the family room should be. One of them said blue and the other said yellow. This got me thinking some more, and I found these images:

Sold! We are going to go for a mustard velvet sofa with an indigo blue wall behind. We’ll have an off-white on the other walls. This should strike a really good balance between a vibrant modern family room for the kids but still being welcoming for the grownups.

Family Room Goals

A squishy sofa

So first of all it’s got to have a lovely squishy sofa, where I can spread out and get comfy to watch TV if I want. The kids also want room to play xbox or watch a movie with their friends on it if they like. Ideally I’d like this to also be a sofa-bed, so that we can have people to stay over. Something like one of these this would be amazing:

Lots of storage

I’d really like to have plenty of storage in the room, for all those jigsaw puzzles, board games and books that we have as a family. In an ideal world I’d have something like this to really maximise storage:

Unfortunately in real life we have a radiator on this wall and I’ll have to figure out a way of working around it!

A desk

A desk area would be great to give the kids somewhere to sit and play with their Lego (and hopefully it’s less likely to be spread all over the floor for me to tread on!). As they get older it could be somewhere to do their homework too. I’m thinking that the bay window area would be the perfect spot to have a built in desk. Maybe something like this?

If we can get the height right, I think a long padded bench seat would be great for the desk rather than chairs, so that it can double up as additional seating if needed. Maybe something like this:

Artwork

I have a collection of the kids favourite bits of artwork that I’d love to display in the room. I also really like the idea of having some kind of light up sign, maybe a bit like this – possibly a bit of a DIY project for me?!

Flooring

A key part is the flooring, we are going to carry on the wood floor we installed in the kitchen:

We love the look of this floor and it can be softened with a rug:

Blinds

If we have a built in desk in the bay window area, I think that blinds would look better. I can’t decide between these ones, at the moment:

I’m really excited to show you how this room has come together!

Kate x.