3 Ways to Style a Modern Living Room with Fab

When it comes to decorating our home, my heartmate and I are constantly butting heads about what we want. My style is pretty eclectic, and if you think I'm kind of all over the place, my heartmate is like eclectic on crack (ecracktic?!). He adores almost every style there is. From shabby chic, bohemian, contemporary, and sometimes, straight-up minimal. Like, suddenly, he wakes up and wants nothing in our home. What the hell?! So I’m trying real hard to keep him on the more modern spectrum. For our living room, we’ve partnered up with Fab to create three modern styles by sprinkling some of their beautiful home goods. We’re doing playful, earthy and bohemian.

So before we get to the different looks, here are some updates on our living room. It isn’t super huge but it’s bigger than most spaces in NYC. It’s definitely bigger than the studio I was living in in the upper east side. Boy were those tricky times. But there are some challenges in decorating big spaces, too. We finally painted the walls white. It was a sad shade of grey before. You’re probably wondering, why make a space feel even bigger with white walls? Turns out, white is just the best paint color for all spaces, big or small. Now, it’s a beautiful, milky white called Snowbound by Sherwin Williams. It's perfect. We also swapped out the ceiling fans! My heartmate is finally okay with this happening. We’ve been living here for almost a year now and we’ve turned the fans on maybe five times. And that totally warrants an execution. Ha! Okay, let's check out styles. They're subtle because there are overlaps but they're still different.

PLAYFUL MODERN

Let’s start with the playful modern look. It’s all about geometric shapes and bright colors with a tongue-in-cheek attitude. We threw in some fun pillows like the gemstone. And uh...yes, that is a penis pillow you see there. You know, just for kicks (or dicks)! Hah. It’s abstract enough though, right? For artworks, we chose illustrations that were childlike. In the credenza vignette, we hung up an illustration of Silver Lake. Gotta rep my hood, you know! And this encouraging ice cream print by Marc Johns is everything. I’ve been a fan of his work since 2010. His does cute and clever illustrations really well.

GET THIS LOOK

EARTHY MODERN

In this earthy modern look, we're channeling the outdoors using botanicals and warm woods. It's also about the handmade like ceramic planters. It's definitely getting wild up in here! Our fireplace doesn’t work so I decided to turn it into a plantspace. My heartmate thinks the plantspace is a bit much much but I love it. It’s lush and really makes the sofa situation feel cozier. For the credenza vignette, we hung a faux taxidermy. I wrapped a few of its antlers in colorful yarn to make it pop. Then, hung a small brass hanging planter on one antler. For artworks, we chose an yucca print.

GET THIS LOOK

BOHEMIAN MODERN

For the bohemian modern look, it’s all about layering and LOTS of it. We're embracing prints, patterns, plants, color, and worldly accents like the indigo mud cloth pillow. I’m totally channeling my inner maximal Jungalow here. Maybe I'm the ecracktic one. I also incorporated the playful and the earthy styles in here because bohos love bold, graphic prints and bling. Bohemians are fabulous and they don’t give a fab! Artworks are by Alessandra Genualdo and Henri Matisse.

I also splashed a fresh coat of paint on the door. I wanted to try a color other than my go-to yellow. It's Sherwin Williams’ Kilkenny. It definitely has a Palm Springs vibe with the green. I’m definitely loving this look more than the others. What I’ve learned is that plants, art, a few side chairs and tchotchkes really help fill up corners in a bigger space nicely. Perfect for those who don’t have a budget to buy all the furniture all at once, because let’s face it, we’re all frugal flamingos here. Okay, so I’ve been called a flamingo before because when I brush my teeth, for some strange reason, I stand on one leg, just like a flamingo. I know, so weird. But you know what? BOHO.