The Secret to This Warm, Layered Living Room? Every Formal Detail Is Balanced by Something Soft – Here's Why the Formula Works So Well

This living room by Oho Interiors has all the hallmarks of a formal space: matching built-ins, a centered fireplace, disciplined color repetition, and a seating layout that feels carefully composed.

And yet, the living room has the kind of ease often associated with old English country houses – spaces layered over time with collected pieces, mixed patterns, and softened edges.

While it might be new construction, this home has as much character as any farmhouse that has stood for years in the charming Iowa town it's set in. Described as the connective heart of the home, founder Melissa Oholendt talks us through the Design DNA of this 'collected, whimsical, and balanced' space and the exact lessons worth borrowing to make a living room feel layered, balanced, and effortlessly livable.

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Balance Structure With Softer Shapes

The foundation of this living room is actually pretty structured. A centered fireplace anchors the space, built-ins frame either side with pleasing symmetry, while the ceiling beams and wall paneling create a rhythm throughout the room.

In another setting, those details could easily have tipped overly formal. But what makes this space feel so inviting is the way Melissa consistently softens every tailored element with something more relaxed.

The clearest example is the seating. Two sofas flank the area, anchoring the entire room and bringing a sense of balance to the open-plan space.

'Flanking sofas can feel formal, but I think what keeps this space feeling distinctly casual but elevated is the lower height of the sofa backs, along with the playfulness of the patterns in the space,' Melissa explains.

It’s a useful design lesson for anyone decorating a living room with strong architectural features. Rather than fighting elements like paneling, beams, or symmetrical layouts, the key is to balance them with softer silhouettes and tactile finishes. Curved upholstery, relaxed linens, gathered fabrics, and varied textures help loosen the effect and make a room feel lived-in rather than overly composed.

Use Complementary Colors to Create Tension

While the room reads neutral at first glance, its palette is actually built around an unexpected pairing: blue and orange. The difference here is that Melissa approached the combination with restraint, choosing softened, earthier versions of each tone rather than anything overly saturated.

Melissa explains that the palette evolved naturally from the architecture of the home. 'This space is the heart of the home – it is the central space that connects all the other spaces from entry to kitchen to bedrooms. Keeping that in mind, we wanted to ensure the colors felt cohesive, but architecturally kept this space on the neutral side to allow the connecting spaces to feel more playful.'

'Keeping the architectural palette fairly neutral but bringing in pattern and layering in warmth with antiques and wood tones allowed the space to still feel interesting and grounded while remaining balanced overall,' she explains.

'I know that apricot sofas are not the right answer for everyone, but for this space and how neutral it is architecturally, we knew it could use a punch of something playful,' she continues. 'From there, it was a balancing act of finding another dominant color that could hold its own alongside the apricot.'

'So we go back to our roots and what we learned in school. What color is opposite orange on the color wheel? Blue. From there, we added patterns and colors until it felt like a thoughtful assemblage of balance and scale,' she notes.

The result is a palette that feels layered and yet a touch energetic without relying on dramatic color contrasts.

Make Layered Pattern Feel Relaxed Rather Than Busy

One of the reasons this living room feels so inviting is that it fully embraces pattern without ever tipping into chaos. There are florals, stripes, checks, embroidery, and woven textures layered throughout the space, yet the room still feels calm.

'For this space, and the entire house, we worked to create a design direction for the overall feel of the project, and that moniker was "Cotswold Farmhouse",' Melissa explains of the brief. 'A balanced color palette, finishes that felt traditional but not old world & layered patterns that felt classic but not fussy.'

The secret lies in the balance of scale and tone.

'Pattern mixing is part formula, part art,' says Melissa. 'We'll always start with a floral and a stripe, typically adding in a floral that feels like a stripe (the ottoman fabric) and then adding in different colors and scale of patterns until it feels like we have a balanced mix of color, pattern, and scale,' she adds.

What also keeps the room feeling relaxed is the amount of visual breathing space built into the scheme. Solid upholstery, warm oak finishes, and textured neutrals act as visual resting points between the busier prints.

It’s a smart approach to borrow in your own home: begin with one floral and one stripe, vary the scale of each pattern, and focus on repeating colors rather than matching motifs exactly. Then balance everything with tactile solids and woven textures to stop the room from feeling overly busy.

Design Conversation Areas Around Circulation Paths

For an open-plan living room to feel genuinely comfortable, the layout has to work just as hard as the decorating. In this space, Melissa avoids one of the most common mistakes in large rooms: allowing circulation paths to cut directly through the seating area.

Instead, the furniture is arranged as its own intimate zone within the larger floorplan, making the room feel cozy and connected without disrupting movement through the home.

'The layout of the room really allowed for the main traffic patterns of the home to circulate around this space, rather than through it,' Melissa explains. 'It gave us an opportunity to create a layout that could feel cozy while you were in it, but still allowed for connection to the spaces around.'

The arrangement itself is deceptively simple – flanking sofas anchored by a large rug and central coffee table – but the proportions are considered. Melissa notes that the studio typically allows '36 inches minimum for traffic patterns,' while keeping seating close enough together to encourage conversation and comfort.

'For sofa to coffee tables, we are typically allowing between 14–20 inches of space,' she advises, 'to ensure there’s still proximity to be able to put your feet up while not feeling too tight.'

Floating seating inward instantly creates intimacy, while a generously sized rug helps define the conversation area within an open-plan space. The other crucial lesson? Never undersize your rug. 'Thinking that a small rug makes a space feel larger – the opposite is actually true,' says Melissa.

Style Shelving Like a Collection, Not a Display

The built-in shelving in this living room strikes a difficult balance: it feels layered and personal, but never cluttered or overly styled.

That sense of ease comes from the fact that Melissa approaches shelf styling less like a perfectly curated display and more like an evolving collection. Books are stacked both vertically and horizontally, objects vary in scale and texture, and negative space is used just as intentionally as the decorative pieces themselves.

'I strive to style shelves with balance in mind,' she explains. 'If I have a shelf that is styled end to end, I try to balance the shelf above with segmented stacks or even just one statement item to help balance the spread of the shelf below.'

'I also am always thinking about each stack of shelves speaking to each other, both in color and in materiality,' she continues. 'As someone who can lose entire days to restyling shelves, know that again, it's part science but also part art.'

It’s a useful lesson for anyone styling open shelving at home. Repeating materials and tones across different shelves creates cohesion, while mixing stacked areas with more open space keeps the arrangement feeling relaxed rather than overcrowded. Vertical elements also help break up the horizontal lines common in living rooms.

And perhaps most importantly, step back regularly as you style. As Melissa puts it, 'Most times, it’s styling a shelf and standing back to see how it feels and then adjusting as necessary until it feels good.'

The Edit

Design DNA is the Homes & Gardens series that breaks down beautiful rooms into their essential elements. Each installment dissects one interior and shows readers exactly what makes it work, from the anchor furniture and layout choices to color, lighting, and styling details.