Midcentury Inspired Living Space

All product reviews and suggestions are not endorsed in any way, shape, or form. I simply enjoy sharing products that I like using with you for your own personal reference. All views are my own.

I didn't realize how many midcentury modern (MCM) pieces I had until I recently decided to pare down on furniture in the house. They had been scattered throughout the house with other pieces that didn't quite match the nubby legged chairs, tables, and dressers I had.

Allie and I decided to switch the bedrooms upstairs, as over Superbowl Sunday, we realized how cramped my little "second living room" became once people were added.

Aaron & I don't need our bedroom to be so huge anyways- we didn't need that amount of square footage to sleep. And when all of our bedroom furniture could easily fit in the smaller bedroom, why did we have it so spread out in the bigger room?

So Allie and I got to rearranging & cleaning. We decided to make the new living space a midcentury modern inspired room, filled with natural elements, and most of my MCM furniture pieces (plus some new additions). We did several sketches to try to decide to arrange the room, but ultimately knew our scale for size was way off.

In comes one of my favorite iOS apps, Room Planner Home Design. I downloaded this app a long time ago, and it's one of my favorites. IT allows you to re-size & shape rooms to fit your needs so that you can virtually rearrange your furniture without having to actually move anything but one finger (the only downside I have experienced is that you often are unable to change the height of objects, such as some dressers). No worries about sore muscles just to find out that the vision you have for your new space won't work!

The 3-D function is great too, because it allows you to walk through the room as it would feel in real life, instead of only seeing the design in 2-D, as you would a hand drawn plan.

Here you can see both the 2-D & 3-D functions of the app. 2-D makes it very easy to rearrange and place your items, while 3-D allows you to customize your space more (paint, flooring, furniture colors) & take a virtual tour of the space you've created.

The best part is that it's free, and that you can save several designs, re-rearrange (as many times as you'd like), and compare whenever you feel the need to switch something up. Truly a life (and muscle) saver in our house!

After playing with the app for a few minutes, I came up with a plan I thought I'd like for the new spaces. I could use one of my several dressers as a sofa table, create an office space by our big window, and still have project space...or so I thought. 

I "walked through" the space, and changed my mind rather quickly (the tiny bunk beds represent the cat tree we have). 

The cat tree made the room less like a retreat and more like a dorm room, which wasn't what I was going for. 

In the new living space, the dresser/sofa table closed the space in way too much and made it almost impossible to use the walkway as a project space. 

I quickly moved a few items around, and it came out something like this. 

I visualized a closet office space in the larger second closet, which could easily be accomplished by removing the sliding doors and fitting the desk inside. There is already an overhead light in the closet, so I wouldn't need to worry about having a desk lamp at all.

This plan also allowed for the Eames chair I scored over the weekend & would leave space for projects, along with extra seating. We have a total of 10 seating options in this room:

Futon (3)

Eames & matching foot rest (2)

Cane back barrel chair (1)

Storage ottoman (1) not shown

Desk chair (1) not shown

Blanket chest (2) not shown

It also allowed us to have the simplified bedroom for maximum relaxation. I'm still working on finishing the bedroom up & finding spaces for some things, but I do find myself falling asleep much faster in the smaller space. The new bedroom also retains heat better, so I don't have to cover myself in 8 layers every night.

Another nice thing about this app is that it lets you re-color everything so that you can better visualize your pieces in the space you've created. Some options are limited, but it does help. Here's a (slightly) more accurate representation of the room.

Then we started actually moving things.........

I decided to replace the closet doors with linen drapes to enlarge the living space, but keep the "office" a separate area. This desk will soon be a work in progress- the veneer is atrocious and needs some serious help!

After a few tweaks and arranging everything to better serve the space & purpose, we had a little something like this- and Allie and I fell in love with the idea of this space even more.

  

  

   

I was even able to finally display some geodes and agate pieces in this space, as they fit in with all of the other natural elements I was using.

There are still a few extra pieces floating around in here, searching for the right home, and the walls aren't totally finished (except the one below), but it is coming along very nicely! 

I have some ideas on what to put in my empty frames, and I have an idea of where I'd like to move the poster frames and large wall pieces I had been storing in the closet beforehand, so most things will be an easy fix.

I can't wait to have this finished so I can do a full reveal for you all! I will also be including a full source guide in my reveal so that you can "Shop My Style" for a lot of the pieces I used in this room.

See you soon! In the meantime, Allie and I are going to sit back and enjoy Mad Men Monday in this perfectly poignant room ;)