Only five years in the making, our front sitting room has finally come together and is almost finished. We have gone from this:

To this:

Will and I surprised ourselves by picking out this zebra patterned wool rug on Saturday. We are conservative people after all, so this was a rather unusual direction for us. But we both liked it and felt it gave the room an element of luxe that sets this space apart from the rest of the house.
The "fish man" sculpture and painting set the colour palette for the room. The background of the painting is a lovely shimmery pewter grey with lots of texture. That led to the wall colour and curtains.

The aboriginal art above the fireplace (which photographs rather strangely) will be moved to above the sofa. We are now on the hunt for a mirror for the mantlepiece - something smoky and square edged - aged and masculine maybe.

The walls are feeling very bare. We also need a coffee table or big upholstered ottoman for the middle of the room. After catching up on blog posts this morning, I emailed Will the first photo from this post, which he liked. Isn't blogging great like that.
The room is now calling for a strong accent colour to lift all the muted tones. I'm thinking mustard or aubergine or burnt orange. Since the zebra rug went down the Liberty cushions aren't quite cutting it.