I’m a lover of white rooms, or mostly white rooms. I love the different shades and nuances of white. I love the serenity a white room offers. I love that an all white room can be changed just by adding a couple of colorful pillows or throws. For anyone who feels white is too hard to live with,  Sunbrella offers wonderfully soft fabrics for use in interior rooms, and of course offers white. Slip covers make white sofas easy peasy to live with if you have kids or dogs or both. Bemz has many slip cover options in a multitude of designs and colors to fit Ikea furniture, including a hard wearing white cotton blend and a gorgeous white linen.

I love the fact that white rooms aren’t boring. Adding different sheens and texture makes an all white room come to life. Soft and hard. Shiny and dull. Rough and smooth. Adding opposites makes an all white room feel dynamic, not static. Adding a few pieces of natural wood or some accents of black takes it to another level.

I say all this even though I have dark leather in the family room and brown velvet in the living room. If white is so easy and I love it so much, why don’t I have it?? Good question…….  When we moved here 19 years ago I invested in a Restoration Hardware sofa in a beautiful chocolate brown. It’s soft, warm and cozy. It brought back memories of my favorite sofa of all time, a chocolate brown velvet of indeterminate brand that I had for years. The years of life with a young boy and many dogs, rescues and fosters, plus assorted cats, kittens, gerbils, hamsters and a couple of birds.  That sofa held up so well. I cleaned all manner of gunk from that sofa over its lifetime. There was nothing wrong with it when I got rid of it, I just wanted a new look. I was never happy with another sofa. It was musical sofas for a few years and my son complained that he left for school in the morning and came home to a different sofa at night.

I found another brown velvet sofa at Goodwill for $80.00! Of course I bought it and the merry-go-round of sofas stopped for a time. It was wide and deep and perfect for snuggling and watching movies or taking a nap. I marveled at my luck. It was in perfect condition. I was in love. Then I went shopping with my bestie and she bought new living room furniture. It was the height of the preppy Hunter Green, Burgandy and Navy craze and I walked out of that store with a receipt for guess what? A Hunter Green, Burgandy and Navy sofa and loveseat. annnd, it was plaid. PLAID! UGH. What was I thinking???  That was one of the most uncomfortable sofas ever. Scratchy fabric and after just a few months the cushions sagged. Plus it was ugly. Really, really ugly.

When we moved into this house I knew that furniture.was.not.coming.with.us.  I was shopping for odds and ends with my daughter-in-law and of course we had to check out Resto and Pottery Barn. I have an on-going love affair with both stores. I think I squealed when we walked in to Resto. There was a chocolate brown velvet sofa. I sat on it. I fell in love. I left with a receipt and a delivery date. I didn’t measure it, never considered that it might be too large for our tiny living sitting room. Consequently we removed the two columns that separated the entry from the afore mentioned sitting room to make space for it. I will never give it up. It’s soft, it’s cushy, it’s lovely. White grainsack pillows look marvelous on it and give it a farmhouse look. I.got.my.velvet.back. The end.

Of course that story doesn’t explain why I have brown leather, and to make this post even longer,  the reason why I have leather in the family room is….. I live with Pig Pen, otherwise known as Mr B. He is the love of my life, complete with twigs and grass clippings on his clothes and in his hair, bark and mud and dirt on his shoes. I vacuum, he brings leaves and dirt in. I vacuum again. He brings leaves and dirt in. Again. It’s never ending. I also have two dogs…..but they don’t bring in leaves and twigs or debris. (That may be a lie, but this is my story and I’m sticking to it.)

The biggest reason I don’t have white sofas???? It isn’t about Pig Pen, or my fur babies. Nope. It’s because I’m lazy physically challenged. Since I injured my spine I can no longer do the whole remove, wash and replace slip covers. OK…..I’m also lazy. So we have leather. Very dark leather. It’s great. Wipe and go. It’s comfy. It doesn’t give me my desired all white room, but I also don’t have to fight slip covers. So I bring in as much white as I can. It’s all about compromise and making my home work for me…….and Pig Pen.

 If you don’t mind wrestling slipcovers, I highly recommend getting a white sofa for your farmhouse home. Even if you live in a fake farmhouse. Or a wannabe farmhouse. I love all white rooms and I cannot lie. White is for every season. White is beautiful. Go for it and let me live vicariously through you. Send me photos of your white rooms and I’ll show them off in future blog posts. Send them to mysuburbansanctury@gmail.com Below is a link to 75 beautiful rooms done in my favorite color scheme.

Click HERE for photos of beautiful rooms and get ideas to incorporate white in your home which was the point of this post……. but I  got ambushed by memories, so now it’s mostly about white. With some brown. sigh

Create your sanctuary, no matter where you live. Create the home you see in your heart.