We’ve been updating the living rooms over the past few months and our new sofa has arrived, making our flex living room playroom bar area complete, and I’m so excited.

With our small spaces at the cozy cottage, some rooms need to do double duty. With our kitchen renovation opening up into the front room, we decided to turn that into a flex room with our bar and a room for play, which may seem like a contradiction, but those were the two best uses of the space. For inspiration for a flex room like this, check out a moodboard and living room decor ideas here.

To make this flex space work, we had to work around two colors. We painted our fireplace hot yellow when we moved in, so whatever decor and furniture we bring in has to work with the fireplace. And also, since this room looks into the kitchen, whatever you see has to work with our emerald green cabinets and veiny countertop stone. You can see some updates to the fireplace area here.

Starting with the bar area, we are using two mismatched vintage wooden and metal stools we bought before we were married. We got a new bar from Homary that was designed for small spaces. To anchor the rest of the space, we got a new, graphic black and white rug from Ruggable to loosely connect with the black and white shag rug in the updated TV room. And that’s it for the neutrals because the rest is all color!

Our new loveseat from Interior Define arrived this weekend, in a navy performance fabric. The coffee tables are orange, and most of the toys, storage bins and artwork are full of color.

And with the arrival of our new sofa, the space is pretty complete! What do you think of our new flex playroom and living room?