Hello Lisamarie, Thank you very much! Well look at it like this, I offer up ideas I would do or consider but then you need to see what works for you and what you like, in my suggestions.. My advice is never impartial though as I am far too invested in what I do and love.. You do need to consider the furniture though but despite all these ideas your bright cushions will still add a really nice contrast.. What I was thinking, because I have this same experience... I painted the chimney breast only in grey.. I then painted the walls a cream colour, skirting in white. In your case it would be Wimborne for the walls and All White for the woodwork... ... I lived with it for a while but felt bored. It wasn't dramatic or characterful.. .. So I went on to paint the left wall where the window is and the opposite wall.. So 3 sides will now have dark grey 1 of the walls has an 8 ft by 6 ft mirror though the other is the chimney breast and the alcoves will be papered Oreste charcoal by Zoffany.. When I have got around to paying my pro-forma! ;) ..... (It's going to be a dark interior for the living room).. So I then painted all the window frames and windows black against the window panes and again a purple/grey colour I made for the frames, skirting, picture rail and architrave. It is coming along but not finished.. I have very little £ so I have to do things when I can.. Why not get some A4 paper and a few sample pots of nice chalky whites and creams, I do like pointing, also Shaded White and Clunch are really gr8 ... Stick some on the wall and some of the skirting colour on the skirting... You want to butt them up close together, so you can see them together... Look throughout the day at the changes. Duplicate the wall colours at eye level too.. so you can see at more height.. The room will look like a bad shave day! : ) ) Colours will change depending on the light.. choose a colour that is just a little creamier, so that if you want the woodwork white... you can still get a contrast.. Otherwise it will be white wall and woodwork and a downpipe chimney breast... So let's just say you went with some contrast... For Downpipe you could have Plummett or Manor house grey for the wood work... You could do the floor too.... Take these ideas and extend them to the other rooms... See what feels right.. Let me know what you think and if you get all that... and have more questions.. I just can't ever write a paragraph!! :))

I already have a reading corner near the other windows. The gap is 4.5 metres. I wonder if I could put a long E-shaped 70 cm-high and 40cm-deep partition behind the sofa along the gap from the edge right upto the wall. The two U-shaped sections formed can be seating areas with two good looking broad planks placed on, 1 or 2, 18mm plywood covering the gap. Cushions and thick rugs can soften the seating and back. The part of the E-shaped partition along the wall can be extended till the window for a display section. Thus, I can have a separate seating area facing the window wall. Rail or cable lighting on the ceiling above which I already have. What say ? Could it work ?

No offence taken! It's a very small bedroom of two teenagers, this is the bookcase AFTER the tidy - as they use it to store all of their belongings. Thanks for the suggestions, I'm leaving the shelf up for now as I suspect the storage option will be useful in future. For now I aim to remove all the items from the shelf and start again with one big item (e.g. a big frame or vase - not a trailing plant) as a focal point.

Thanks both. To Jules Mc: I attach some additional photos of the room layout for context. There is an adjoining room (playroom) where I took this picture. We deliberated the position of the sofas (they are different sizes) for ages and chose the current positioning as it was the most practical from which to watch telly. I tried to find ideas and inspiration on Houzz for how to deal with the corner and we settled on that coffee table. In an ideal world we would have bought a corner sofa but we already had the large sofa and didn’t want to replace. If you have any ideas on how we could improve the layout that would be great (I’m not attached to the coffee table but the sofas can’t be changed). Regarding the picture ledge, I was actually inspired by the third picture down you posted (with the blue sofa) so it was on my mind to add another ledge below. The reason I fitted a long picture shelf was because the sofa wasn’t centre (I decided against two long ones as I didn’t have enough pictures to fill it). One option could be to simply cut the existing shelf in two and have two shelves (as in the picture) centralised over the sofa (though this won’t be in centre of wall which is a bit annoying). I too liked the messy layout from that picture, but alas my shelf is too shallow to overlap pictures so I spaced them instead. To minnie101: I like the mocked up design, it does help to show what it would look like with taller lamps and plants. I might see if there is an interior design app to help me with this! The footstool is usually in front of the sofa but gets moved to one side when people sit on it. Which light are you talking about - the ceiling or table lamp?