My living room feels so restful

My living room is now

FULL OF CHARACTER

Using a pretty pastel colour scheme and adding fun touches and clever styling tricks, Beam Irwin has created a living area perfect for socialising and relaxing

About me

I’m Beam, 34, a freelance props and interior stylist and maker of floral home decorations, which I sell on Instagram @bloomsbybeam. I live with my husband, Christian, 39, an IT specialist. Our home is a 1950s three-bedroom semi-detached house in Middleton, Manchester. I post home updates @aplacetogether. My room...

MY PROBLEM LIVING ROOM Our living space had a good-sized open-plan layout, but it didn’t have much warmth or personality. I wanted to add lots of fun, happy colours to make the room more cheerful.

HOW I MADE IT WORK We painted the walls and shopped around for furniture that would make the layout work better. I decorated the room with bargain finds from second-hand selling sites and I filled the walls with my own artwork. It took two years for me to feel that this room was finally complete.

MY FAVOURITE PART My fireplace. It’s very photogenic and I like that I can play around with it by changing the mantel decorations or the artwork above. I love how flexible it can be.

Before

‘Having a place that looks and feels restful was so valuable to us, especially during lockdown’

Style advice Three simple tricks to try in your own home

STYLE UP YOUR FIREPLACE

Having never had a fireplace before, Beam was excited to make it a focal point. First, she painted the wall behind in Bon Bon by Frenchic and then painted the surround, a free find from Facebook Marketplace, white. A spare piece of skirting board was added to the top of the mantelpiece for extra display space, perfect for Beam’s styling to take centre stage. The framed art was made by Beam using up colourful pieces of leftover wrapping paper and wallpaper.

CLEVER DISTRACTIONS

A wall-mounted TV wasn’t top of Beam’s wish list, but it was one of her husband’s musthaves. With a few tweaks, she’s turned this space into a stylish corner. A cosy rug underneath a second-hand sideboard, originally from Swoon Editions, grounds the space while framed family prints and a table lamp add a homely feel. Leafy houseplants, set on different-sized stools – all charity shop buys – add extra interest and cleverly distract the eye from the flat-screen TV.

FIND THE PERFECT FIT

Before the makeover, Beam carefully considered different pieces of furniture to make the most of the space available. These B&Q floating shelves, which her father-inlaw put up, were the ideal fit for the tricky alcove space. Among the framed family photos and treasured trinkets, Beam has decorated the shelves with gardening and flower books found in 27 West Park, a favourite antique shop in Harrogate. Book spines that didn’t match the colour scheme have been spun around, with the aged pages adding to the vintage feel.

Beam wanted to bring the pinks of the living room into the dining area. She’s dressed the dining table with a handwoven table runner and placemats from her home country, the Philippines. A glass-fronted BILLY bookcase from IKEA is used to store the couple’s glassware and spare kitchen bits

‘When we bought this house, we loved the spacious living room that extends to the dining area and overlooks the garden’

A fan of open-plan living, Beam loves that she can sit on the sofa and look out to the garden. The marble nest of tables was another Facebook Marketplace bargain find while the corner cabinet was made by Beam’s fatherin-law, designed to hide the electrical meters and wood for the log-burner

Style idea

Try your hand at papercutting to create colourful artwork for your walls MY EXPERIENCE

When we bought this house, we loved the spacious living room that extends to the dining area and overlooks the garden. The walls had been painted in neutral tones of creams and greys, which I was grateful for because it was a nice blank canvas for me to work with.

Before we even picked up a paintbrush, I spent a long time planning the room, looking at furniture styles and colour schemes for at least a month. Once we decided on the look, Christian and I gave the walls a fresh coat of paint before getting started. Deciding where the TV would go was one of the major changes to the layout. Originally, it was near the window, which didn’t work because of the sun’s glare. It looks so much better placed behind the door, and with the empty wall, it’s the perfect place for the sideboard too.

It’s the little details that have made the biggest impact for me, like changing the curtain poles to a track system and placing them higher up to make the space look bigger. Adding a fire surround, which I got for free on Facebook Marketplace, and hanging my papercut artwork above gave the room a central focal point, which has made a huge difference.

Having a place that looks and feels restful was so valuable to us, especially during lockdown. Being able to plan and do tweaks to the space has helped keep me busy during the months we could only stay at home. Now my living room feels like it reflects my personality and interests. The space is filled with my favourite pastel colours, pieces collected from my travels, as well as family photos. Transforming this plain white box into such a joyful room has given me so much enjoyment.

My shopping list

● Walls painted in Brilliant Matt White, £22 for 10L, B&Q ● Fireplace surround painted in Bon Bon wall paint, £9.95 for 250ml, Frenchic ● Alcoves painted in Sulking Room Pink, £49.50 for 2.5L, Farrow & Ball ● EKTORP two-seater sofa, £279; EKTORP armchair, £199; ALSEDA stool, £25 each; BILLY bookcase with glass doors, £95, all IKEA ● For a similar light fixture, try the Globe flush pendant, £79; Bow arc overreach floor lamp, £159, both MADE.com ● For a similar table lamp, try Bibi ceramic table lamp, £39; for similar blossom, try the artificial blossom flower single spray, £3, both Dunelm ● Duo Marble nesting tables, £399, theFabb.co.uk ● Malu rectangle dining table, £450; for a similar dining chair, try the So’Home Blue velvet chair, £129, both La Redoute ● For a similar rug, try the Stovall tufted Blue rug, £86.99; for a similar sideboard, try the Lutie sideboard, £236.99, both Wayfair ● For a similar dining room rug, try the Helsinki geometric rug, £69.99, Homescapes ● Cushions, £9.99, from a selection at HomeSense ● For a similar runner, try the metallic table runner, £24, Next Turn to p128 for stockist details