Umm Suqeim Project: Living & Dining Room Reveal

I have had this little project reveal up my sleeve for a while so I am really delighted to finally show you how I helped refresh a living room for a lovely Franco-Moroccan family in Dubai's Umm Suqeim neighbourhood. 

The lounge on the ground floor was spacious and flooded with light and although my client already had a few existing pieces in the room, she was keen to essentially start from scratch. Before I ramble on with all the exciting details and what we sourced, let's have a look at the finished look, shall we? Ta-da!

a grey backdrop with pops of neon colour and brass accents: Stella + the stars' signature style 

And now, let me walk you through what we did to transform the room. Can you guess what I got stuck in with first? Yes the wall colour of course. You should know by now that the first thing I do when I visit a client's pad for a consultation is to get my paint colour sample palette out!  However, we had a bit of a challenge on our hands on this one, as the windows have this really annoying yellowish tint that they love to stick on villa windows in Dubai... This made the search for a good grey paint colour a bit more painful than usual. We had to go for a much cooler grey that's off Jotun's colour chart (almost blueish) to get the right tone. Bloody pleased with the result though! 

Sofas
The exsiting sofas have a lovely design and shape and are from The One but used to be this dull dark brown that was dragging the room down. I like reworking existing pieces rather than replacing them to keep costs down so we had them re-upholstered in a lovely heather grey to give them a new lease of life. We accessorised them with gorgeous colourful cushions from West Elm and Missoni Home available from Amara. 

Coffee table
The existing coffee table was a square dark wood and very imposing for the space so we replaced it with a fabulous custom-made yet simple marble table with black steel legs from the brilliant peeps at The Line Concept. We went for a rectangular shape to better fit with the layout of the room, and soft edges to make it kid-friendly. We accessorised it with an existing chrome tray and candle, and added a gorgeous vase from The Den. Plus some lovely coffee table books to finish the look. 

Rugs
We added a couple of rugs to hide the boring beige tiles (story of my life, sigh). West Elm's Arabesque (one of my favourites I have to say...) in the sitting room. In the dining room, we used a gorgeous over-dyed turquoise blue rug my client already owned but was badly damaged. We just had it repaired and brought back to life and look at the result! 

Lighting
We used an existing chrome lamp in the dining area. In the sitting room, my client chose this lovely mid-century modern style black and brass floor lamp from West Elm. I am a little bit in love with it... 

TV unit
The existing wall TV unit was dark, clunky and very blah. We replaced with my weapon of choice - IKEA BESTA units with white high gloss doors. They just go with anything and with any style and are so affordable, I use them all the time for projects. For this room, we used two triple units for extra storage and cover almost the entire width of the wall. 

Transitional space
We had to think cleverly about the space between the sitting area and dining room as it's a totally open plan. I needed to fill the blank with something really pretty as it's the first thing you spot when you enter the house from the hallway. My clever client picked a beautiful black rattan chair from The Den on top of what is possibly my dream rug from Carpet Centre - a cream cowhide with splashes of gold... Tragically, it's not in stock anymore but I found a similar design in silver.

Re-arranging cushions - the story of my  life as a home stylist... 

Dining room
My client had her eyes on the Saarinen Tulip Marble table for years but with an potential move back to Europe on the cards for her family, we couldn't justify the price tag of the real deal so patiently waited for the sales at MOOD (who, bizzarely haven't got a website...) to grab a little bargain on one of their fab reproductions... It looks stunning and is lovely quality. The dining chairs are Eames style with dark wood legs from MOOD as well. The decorative candle is from Fornasetti. The faux Areca palm plant is from Home Centre. 

You'll notice we are missing a little bit of artwork. This is because the art pieces ordered didn't arrive on time for the shoot... Unfortunately, these things happen [sad face inserted here]. 

Thank you to paparazza extraordinaire Karen Pissara from Design K for the gorgeous pictures, and another big merci to The Gorgeous Flower Company for supplying all the stunning blooms for the shoot. 

If you're curious to see what the room looked like before I got my paws on it, here are a couple of before shots and some moodboards with the initial ideas I proposed. What do you think of the revamp?