Pajama Lounge REVEAL
Did the title of the post entice you to read more?!?
There’s a new phrase being tossed around in the design world… Pajama Lounge. I first heard it on Young House Love Has a Podcast and then Apartment Therapy recently shared an article on What is a Pajama Lounge? The space that I was referring to as our family room really is better suited to be our Pajama Lounge as it’s just that… a space that we basically lounge around in wearing pajamas. It’s our hang out space. The room that we gather to watch TV. It’s the place in our home that the kids play, do homework, and create. It’s essentially the everything room where it all happens.
Taking a step back to when we first bought our brick ranch fixer upper, the room looked nothing as it does now. Let’s head down memory lane for a glimpse at what we started with…
The vertical paneling was torn down. The carpet was pulled up. The ceiling was removed.
New framing was added. New sheetrocked installed. New wood flooring layed.
A few weeks later, a completely transformed room was created with a fresh palette to decorate.
The walls were painted. Furniture was brought in. Layers were added. And the once barren, dreary space came alive…
Welcome to our renovated living room, a.k.a. Our Pajama Lounge
Step inside…
I shared a glimpse of our PJ hang out room a couple weeks ago when I wrote a post on the new rolling barn doors, which there are two of, that separate this space from the rest of the house. To create a cohesive tie throughout the house, the paint color on the doors is the same as the newly painted kitchen cabinets.
The pajama lounge is a large space at about 23′ x 15′. A space of this large size can be overwhelming to lay out so I decided to create two zones – a TV / lounge area and a separate fun / work area.
The opening off the foyer is the TV / lounge zone. Most of the furniture in this space is from our previous home and the set up fairly the same as it was. The TV sits on a media stand at the far wall and is surrounded with a collage of prints + pictures from Minted. Even though the TV – the big black box – is large, it doesn’t feel overwhelming or dominate the space because the elements around it are interesting and distract the eye.
To create the two zones, I positioned the sofa in the center of the room facing the TV. Then behind the sofa is a large table (part of the work zone) that is a desk for creating. In the TV zone, along with the sofa are other seating options including a comfy side chair in a small geometric pattern and an armless side chair in a green suede fabric.
New window treatments flank the sides of the two large windows and the continuing pattern at each window, tie together the two zones.
Other furniture elements in this area of the room are light and airy to keep the space feeling spacious and open. The lucite coffee table can easily be moved when all of us are lounging and the new white metal side table is attractive from all sides – front, back, and sides – so no matter the view point, it looks good.
Atop the side table which sits between the chair and sofa is a lamp with a clear glass base and white shade. It took me a while to find the right lamp – I tried many! I’m a lamp hoarder so thankfully I didn’t have to buy anything new. I first tried a thin, tall lamp, but it dominated the room. Then I tried a smaller lamp with a solid base but it wasn’t the right scale. Finally I tried this lamp and I think because it’s clear glass it balanced the layers of color in other elements throughout the room.
Along with the large desk behind the sofa used from homework + creating, the second zone of the room is used for play. The tall bookcases in a distressed wood finish on the far wall are a recent purchase. They are half open shelves and half closed at the bottom. The top portion of the bookcase stores arts + crafts supplies in boxes, toys in baskets, books, files, etc. The bottom section with the closed storage holds the kids toys.
The fun zone offers the kids a wide open area to play and in the corner is a drum set. Because we don’t have a finished basement anymore, many of the items that used to be in the basement – toys, drums, all the other ‘stuff’, had to find a new home (or are still in boxes, haha).
In the work / fun zone of the large pajama lounge that is the second rolling door that leads to the kitchen. This area of the space is still a work in process (as is a bit of every room in the house), but I have ideas brewing…
We love and live in this space so much. It’s our hub. The space is so bright + feels so inviting. And who doesn’t love a good before & after. Let’s take one more peek at what it once looked like and how our pajama lounge looks now…
Check out this post on how I created a cohesive color palette in the room with the colors + layers of the room I chose.