 
After a long, white winter, there’s nothing quite like a springtime mix of
color and style to brighten up a home, so our Room of the Month is
this bright living room.
We'll examine this room in terms of function, mood
and harmony — Over the
years, we’ve found this to be a highly effective way of analyzing the décor
of any room and these principles can be applied to a kitchen, bath, living
room — even to a garden or a garage.
Here, we’ll look first at the function of this room. It’s obviously a living
room, and a somewhat old-fashioned one at that. The owners of this room
aren’t asking it to fill more than one function, as happens in a more modern
open floor plan with a combined kitchen/living area, or in a loft, where the
space is designed to change, chameleon-like, from an area for dining to
living to entertaining to sleeping.
Here, the function is clearly relaxation and entertaining on a small scale,
and for that function, this room works quite well. The sofa and chair sit
catty-corner to one another, creating a good conversation area. The larger
sofa can seat three or four, and the matching easy chair can seat another
person, making this room ideal for entertaining for two couples, or for just
hanging out with the family.
The over-sized coffee table here provides a handy place for quests to rest
their drinks or desserts, with a minimum of awkward reaching. And for
relaxing alone or with a few family members, this living room provides
enough space for lounging with a book or while watching the flames flicker
in the fireplace. The lamp on the mantle provides reading light for the far
end of the sofa.
In terms of function, this room could be improved with the addition of
another reading light, perhaps a floor lamp standing between the sofa and
the chair. Also, if the owners wanted to provide more seating, they could
install another chair, or better yet, a loveseat, opposite the sofa. This
would obscure the fireplace a bit, which would be unfortunate, but the
benefit would be extra seating and more complete look.
The mood of the room is casually-elegant. It’s a traditional look, but
updated by being kept simple. The designer has made good use of a
traditional color combination, with yellow walls trimmed in white for the
crown molding, for the frame for the window, and on the fireplace and
built-in bookshelves. The white sofa and chair continue this mood, as the
white lends itself to a more formal look, while the over-stuffed, curved
look of the furniture is more casual.
In terms of harmony, this room is totally pulled together. Staying with the
yellow and white color scheme has kept everything working in concert, and
allows the polished wood of the floor to really stand out, especially since
it’s accented by the wood table. The colors are what really make this room
work so well: yellow, white, and a bit of green in the accents of the basket
of apples and the flowers.
In fact, going back to our earlier suggestion of adding a loveseat, we’d
choose one in a patterned fabric, either floral or stripes, in yellow and
pale green, to bring out the color choices a little more fully. Thinking
still of harmony, this room could also benefit from a rug, either in a sisal
or in a yellow-white-and-green combination. That could be all that’s needed
to complete the look of this cheerful, comfortable living room.
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