Winter Decor Refresh & Valentine’s Day Ideas

After all the holiday decor is taken down, swept up, and packed away my house always feels more than a little blah. Since I have mostly neutral decor, at this time of year I have to add back in pops of color otherwise my house feels too stark and white.

I tend to fall back on blue and white decor when not decorating seasonally but this year instead I pulled out some moody grays, and used black and white touches, it seemed fitting for this wintery time of year. It also gave me the chance to use this Shibori pillow I got from Target when they launched the Opalhouse line a few years ago. It is bolder than my usual style but I really like how it mixed with the other pillows on the couch.

Last Friday I shared the antelope patterned pillows as part of our Winter Favorite Finds, I have yet to find a pattern or color that doesn’t coordinate with them. They even worked well with my holiday decor, they provide the perfect neutral pop in this room.

I switched my two pieces of art (both from Minted) before the holidays. I wanted to pull out the deep greens in this one at Christmas so I moved the more neutral one into my Dining Room. I liked how the colors all worked together with the deep gray velvet pillows in this room. Winter seems like a good time to use deeper more saturated colors and velvet is pretty much always my favorite.

I am just getting going on the final steps of decorating this room, after months of trying to decide between having two couches or one large sectional, I think I am about to pull the trigger. I am looking forward to finally having this space all finished up since it is really the center of our home.

I just got these new chairs before Christmas, you saw them in this post here, they are a lovely gray velvet. I do keep them covered with throws for the sake of our dog Auggie (who is a lounge king and can spot a comfortable chair a mile away), but so far we’ve avoided any major spills or stains on them. Fortunately, I drink white wine and my friends who sit in them are encouraged to do the same (wink wink).

For the dog lovers out there, I turned around while writing this post and there was Auggie, all snuggled up in yes, his favorite spot. He’s also on one of my favorite pillows but I didn’t have the heart to move him, I did however have to snap a photo for this post.

I also already shared this large tray I added to our coffee table, I bought it for entertaining purposes but for now it holds all the things like books and the remotes and such. At this time of year, small touches like candles and throws (especially a fur one) make the space feel cozier. Our coffee table is an ancient one from Pottery Barn, but I refinished a few years ago with a weathered gray finish you can see how I did it HERE.

Last year I shared some Valentine’s decor in this room, I haven’t put that up yet (I am doing something a little different this year which I’ll share next week) but here is a look back. Most of this decor (the garland and the XOXO pillow) have since become permanent fixtures in my daughter’s room so I guess I’ll have to restock. You can see other Valentine’s Day celebration ideas here.

We’ll be painting soon and are hoping to get hardwoods put into this space, so that will help the room get finished off. I think I’ll eventually add a larger gold mirror where the art is to help bring more light in the room. The back of our house faces east so we don’t get much natural light in here, which is one of the very few things I don’t absolutely love about this home.

So more changes are still to come but for now, this space is much improved from its post-Christmas state. The sources for the room are below~

XO,

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