Spring decor refresh - How I lightened up our living room for spring

After the longest winter ever, this spring I started feeling like I wanted to add something to my house that I don’t usually use a ton of (at least not unless it’s in a kid’s room): color. Overall, our house is very black-and-white, with brass and wood tones mixed in. But this year I felt like I wanted to lighten and brighten things up a bit.

Because adding a ton of color would mean changing my entire décor scheme (something I didn’t want to do), I swapped out a bunch of my black or dark décor with pale blue and green tones. This might not be a lot of color if you love color and use it a lot, but for me it was a pretty big step.

I had purchased a few new throw pillows and was contemplating my next move, when Birch Lane offered to send me some of their latest spring décor to help with my refresh. If you’re not familiar with Birch Lane, it’s a site owned by Wayfair, but they offer a more curated selection of traditional- and farmhouse-style accents and furniture.

To go with the new pale blue throw pillows and candles I’d just bought, I decided to add in a white throw blanket to the sofa to replace a gray one (you can see it tucked behind the pillow, above). It’s a lightweight cotton that’s the perfect weight for spring evenings. It also has a subtle herringbone pattern that I love, especially because when you decorate with a lot of neutrals like I do, texture becomes a big design element.

The biggest element of the room I redid was the gallery wall right behind the sofa. I’d been thinking about this for a while, and had started gathering the art but just wasn’t quite there yet. I saw a pair of fern prints on Birch Lane that were the missing pieces I needed to finish off the wall. I was surprised by the quality — they’re not just a print, but a textured fern that looks almost 3D.

When I got the prints, the frames were actually a lighter-color stain, but I felt like the wall needed a bit more contrast, so I put a coat of darker stain on them quickly, let it dry, and re-hung them, and I think it works much better for the space! The perks of real-wood frames.

Finally, I turned to our shelves. We have large built-ins in the living room, and they started to feel a bit heavy to me this year. I ended up removing one of the shelves to open up the middle area of the built-ins (I’d already done this on one row of shelving). I found a faux-olive tree, something I’d wanted for a while, in a scaled-down size that happened to be the perfect height for the shelf space. It adds some life to the overall look and I love it.

To balance out the other side of the shelves, I found a large finial that looks like it’s made of plaster, but it’s actually a weathered wood. Because it’s so large, the pale tone lightens up the whole display.

Overall, I’m thrilled with the new look, and I feel like it’s much more suited to the spring and summer seasons than our black-and-white velvet throw pillows, black-and-white wall art, and dark-wood accents on the shelves. I was going for a “fresh” look and I think I achieved it!