Shop the Room: Family Friendly Modern Transitional Living Room
Welcome to the inaugural Shop the Room post! With these designs, my goal is to give you a starting point - a template, if you will - for designing a room in a certain style and look. You can definitely recreate this exact room in your home if you’d like, but you can also consider it a starting point and make it your own! Change up the upholstery fabrics, swap out the rug for another one that you like, pick some art that makes you smile…make it feel like you.
To kick things off, I thought I’d start with a family friendly living room. We all spend a ton of time in our living spaces, don’t we? It’s where we plop down on the sofa for a movie, play games with our kids, and have conversations with friends and family. Creating a space that can handle all of those things and stand up to the wear and tear of life is important!
When I set out to design a family friendly living room, I think about both form and function - how can I make this look good and work well for the family that’s going to live here? In this particular design, I made it a goal to create a room that feels grown up and tailored, but that has some “hidden” features that make it more kid-friendly. Let’s talk through what I mean by that!
The Style
This room’s style is a modern twist on a transitional look. Blending those two together meant choosing clean-lined pieces (sofa, chairs, and tables) with a streamlined look, but adding a coziness factor to it with the patterns in the textiles (rug and pillows).
There’s also a lot of warmth in this room with the wood tones sprinkled around and touch of brass in the floor lamp. All in all it feels pretty inviting I’d say!
The Furniture and Layout
I picked out a sofa and two chairs for the seating in this setup, which works well for your average living room, but you can always adapt it to make it work for your home! If you’ve got a larger living room, for example, maybe you’d want to have two sofas arranged in an “L” and one accent chair across from them. Or, if you’ve got a smaller space, try out a sofa with just a single chair instead.
For the upholstery, I stayed on the lighter side to keep things looking bright, but don’t worry - these are performance grade fabrics! They’ll stand up to spills and are easy to clean up when needed. I always recommend upgrading to performance fabrics when it’s possible, and the good news is that just about every retailer has them these days.
The sofa is one I talked about in my Sit Test review for West Elm - you can read more about it here.
For accent furniture, I chose a lot of rounded edges to both soften some of the squared-off pieces as well as make it safer for little ones as they play.
The Color Scheme
This space has a calming, mostly neutral base, and then I added in some different shades of blue as the accent color. There are some subtle mossy greens in the rug as well, but otherwise, the colors are pretty neutral. The patterns and textures are what adds the visual interest here, and of course the art work on the walls adds some fun personality as well!
The Decor
Fun-meets-sophisticated in this living room’s decor. The art in particular has a lot of personality and makes sure the space doesn’t take itself too seriously. There are three pieces and they’re all super affordable! Art is very taste-specific though, so feel free to swap these out for ones that fit your style - just make sure they continue the fun!
The pillows add a little bit of a masculine feel to the room with their straight lines and grid patterns. I like the way they balance out the heavily patterned Persian-inspired rug. These are all from the same Etsy shop (Etsy is one of my favorite sources for pillows).
Finally, the lighting. In every living room, I ideally like to have at least a table lamp, floor lamp, and some sort of overhead lighting, so that’s what you see here! The table lamp is a little funky and unique, and the floor lamp has a simple, but elegant look to it with the curved neck. Overhead is one of my favorite semi-flush mounts ever. I love the look of the drum shade with the metal frame around it. It’s so versatile (it would look great in a bedroom too) and works great even if you have lower height ceilings.
Shop this Family Friendly Modern Transitional Living Room
Scroll on down to see all the products I included in this space! (Affiliate links*). You can see the specific ordering details in the list view at the bottom of the page. There I included sizes, colors, fabrics, and other important pieces of info.
Have questions about anything you see here or want to figure out how to adapt it to your home? Head to The Community and post about your own space there!
Product Details:
Sofa: 86” Length in Performance Coastal Linen - Oatmeal (looks very different in person than online - order a swatch!)
Chairs: Pebble, Performance Heathered Tweed
Rug: 8’6”x11’6”
Semi-Flush Light Fixture: 16” size
Coffee Table: White Wash
Blue Stripe Pillow: 22” (need insert as well)
Grid Pillow: 20” (need insert as well)
Lumbar Pillow: 12”x18” (need insert as well)
Art Print Above Sofa: 24”x36” size (here’s a frame suggestion)
*This post contains affiliate links, which means Mix & Match Design Company earns a small commission from your purchase at no cost to you.
