Living Rooms come in all shapes and sizes. Some are very formal, some very relaxed. Some are definitely places where people entertain friends, others are cosy family chill-out rooms. Having an idea of how you plan to use the room will help shape and determine how we decorate it.

Often colour schemes are determined based on existing sofas, carpets or curtains, although many people like to use neutral colours for their decorating, and then soft furnishings as their "highlight colours" - either can work effectively, and I'll try to include some example photos of each.

Living Rooms are also places where people often like to experiment with feature walls and/or wallpaper. There's absolutely nothing wrong with this (and it keeps things interesting for me!), but my only slight word of warning would be to keep things simple in smaller rooms; where space is limited, the fewer different colours, patterns and textures the eye has to take in, the bigger the space will feel.

This was one of my all-time favourite room make-over projects - a lovely period property in Caversham. As with many older properties, it took a lot of work, but it was well worth it in the end. 

The existing wallpaper had damp patches, which were caused by condensation: warm air in the room was condensing on the cold exterior walls, which were (as you might expect) poorly insulated. The moisture then soaked into the wallpaper, which attracted mould and so on. So I stripped off all the paper, applied a layer of thermal lining paper to solve the problem, then applied more textured paper over the top, before painting the entire room. The colours for the walls were from the Dulux "Heritage" Collection - the main walls were "Cornish Clay", and the chimney breast was "Sage Green". Here are shots from before (after stripping the paper), during and after:

This cosy family sitting room has a lovely calm, chilled-out feel to it. The combination of light duck egg blue with creams or warm neutrals can often create this sort of atmosphere. Because the room is quite small, the decision not to use strongly contrasting colours or wallpaper helps to keep things simple, as does using the same (or very similar) colours on the walls, sofa and curtains.

This was a fun project! This dramatic wallpaper certainly wasn't cheap, but it was lovely to work with, and certainly made a feature wall that created a lot of interest and conversations. The back of the cabinet is actually solid, but for fun we wallpapered it with some off-cuts to make it look as if the you could see right through!

This was a nice project to work on, involving a number of different tradespeople. First of all, a gas engineer removed the existing gas fire and filled up the hole where the flue was. I then finished the making good on that wall, including fitting new skirting board, and then decorated the whole room - three walls, the ceiling and woodwork were all painted white, with one feature wall in grey. New flooring and blinds were then fitted, before the new furniture was moved in - no, don't ask how they got that sofa in through the door! This is a good example of using only neutrals (in this case whites and greys) throughout, and then using soft furnishings as the highlight colours - in this case the mustard and wine red cushions.

This living-dining room used a pale duck egg blue on most of the walls, and a darker version on the feature wall. Combined with the elegant fireplace, flooring and furniture, it hits a great balance between "formal" and "informal".

This family room combines a really dark, rich teal with pale grey, and soft furnishings in lighter teal, to give a very coordinated feel without being overly formal. It's a large enough room, and there's plenty of natural light, so the dark teal isn't overpowering - the end result is a fun, relaxed space, perfect for the family to "chill out" in.