Many living rooms are dominated by big, black televisions, and as Tara Dennis explained, this can pose a huge design problem. Tara showed how to ‘blend’ a TV with the rest of the room. She introduced texture in the form of natural elements such as bamboo, pebbles, coconut shells and dark timbers and fabrics. These were added in a layering technique, to add warmth and richness to the room.
Colour cues
The black television gave Tara the colour cue to give the rest of the room some warmer, darker tones to help blend everything together. She replaced the blonde timber coffee table with a beautiful, dark woven Braxton Range coffee table ($599 from Freedom).
Tara installed bamboo blinds (‘Baltic’ 150 x180cm, $129 each from Freedom). The curtains were replaced with ready-made pinch pleat curtains ($99 from Spotlight). To add texture and warmth to these plain calico curtains, Tara sewed on a strip of natural black hessian ($2.99/m from Spotlight).
Holiday snaps were blown up and printed out in black and white at the local photo centre, then popped into rich, chocolate brown Ribba frames ($25 from IKEA). Tara also created a framed original using a sarong from Bisagoma, folded in half.
The cushions just didn’t fit with the new, rich colour scheme, so they were replaced with dark brown cushions.
Tara considered adding a bamboo screen to take the height away from the television, but opted instead for a feature of pampas grass in a pot of shiny black pebbles.
Spotlight stores
Phone 1300 305 405
IKEA
Phone (02) 9418 2744, or visit www.ikea.com.au
Freedom
Phone 1300 13 55 88, or visit www.freedom.com.au
African Sarong fabrics
Bisagoma
Phone (02) 6685 3921 or visit www.bisagoma.com.au
Ornaments, bowls etc are available through selected homewares stores, such as Bayswiss and Freedom, or search your local markets for some real treasures.