A Modern Farmhouse Living Room Renovation

“I can’t believe this is MY home!"

Jennifer Verruto, an interior designer from Blythe Interiors, can’t get enough of her client’s reaction to her newly transformed modern farmhouse living room, not to mention the whole house.

I mean, I would react the exact same way if my house looked like that. Can you believe how amazing her retro kitchen looks?! And that sleek, contemporary farmhouse dining room...um, yes, please!

The whole house was updated when Jennifer’s client was getting ready to retire and decided she needed a warm and cozy oasis to spend time in. I think this modern farmhouse living room certainly achieved that!

As a new homeowner, I am in dreamland right now, because there are SO many things I want to do. The hardest thing for me is figuring out where to start. You know that saying, “Champagne taste on a beer budget”? That’s me!

So, I asked Jennifer what her favorite way to find design inspiration is. She said, “I love starting with a bold piece of artwork or a fabulous rug and working my way out from it. I use a piece to ‘cross pollinate’ the room - pull a little blue out of that rug and pop it onto the sofa, pull black and white accents through the space, etc.”

It sounds so simple, right?! Before I jet off to go shopping through our inspiration feed (psst, here’s a link to our inspiration page), let me tell you a little more about Jennifer’s modern farmhouse living room design.

Jennifer’s starting point for this contemporary farmhouse design was consistency. She said, “the whole space was absolutely begging for [it].”

“The first thing I wanted to do was tear off the dated wallpaper and create a consistent floor throughout the whole space,” she said, “Just from the entryway, you could see three completely different types of flooring, so we chose one light, bright floor throughout for consistency. Removing the wallpaper was a no-brainer, and the next step was removing the contrasting moulding at the ceiling, just below the beams. It was tricking the eye into lowering the ceiling height and making the space feel shorter than it was.”

I had no idea that was even a thing! I always thought crown molding was a must have.

My favorite part came next...

“Running Stikwood (in Hamptons) from floor to ceiling - including past the beams - was crucial in achieving a taller look in the space,” Jennifer mentioned.

You heard it here first, y’all. Stikwood can help make a room look and feel taller!

Jennifer chose Hamptons for the accent shiplap wall in her chic modern farmhouse living room, because, “it’s the perfect rustic version of diy shiplap! It’s somehow subtle and impactful at the same time.”

As much as I love hearing about Stikwood, what I really wanted to know more about was how to decide where to put it. Jennifer had the best advice!

“I would say, first, decide where you want your attention to be drawn, and how much impact you want. Sometimes clients have a TV on one wall and their gorgeous fireplace is on another. I would draw the focus to the softer element, not the technology. Or make the accent wall so beautiful that you barely notice the technology. For example, if you use Stikwood on a TV accent wall – with a beautiful console underneath and maybe a shelf above the TV with some accents on it – then the whole wall looks purposeful. If you just put a TV on an entertainment console and have blank walls surrounding it, the focus is going to be the TV … not the wall, not the accents, not the beauty of the space.”

That makes so much sense! I swear, I am going home tonight and rearranging my family room to move the focus away from our TV. My husband is gonna look at me like I’m insane and I’m gonna say, “Husband, aren’t you glad I work at Stikwood?!”

Cheers! Carmen

Do you love the look of this Hamptons DIY shiplap wall?! If so, buy a sample today!

Thanks to Jennifer at Blythe Interiors for sharing your design with us!! I asked Jennifer what made her want to become an interior designer. Here is her story:

"I have always been a designer, I just never knew it was a career path possibility. When I was little, I would always rearrange my room or spend my money buying new rugs or shelves for my bedroom! As an adult, I started helping my friends in their spaces and started really seeing a niche need in our industry for design help that was affordable and realistic for their budgets and spaces. I started shopping for them at inexpensive retail stores and giving them advice on how they could make their spaces more livable and beautiful without blowing all their money! Seeing people’s thrilled reactions to my advice and ideas was the driving force in getting started … and the rest is history!"