Spaces I Remember #4 - My Mother's Living Room
Spaces I Remember #4 — My Mother's Living Room
Every space I write about has been special to me in its own way. But this one is different. This one is closer to the heart.
Unlike the other rooms in this series, this space doesn't live only in memory. It still exists, and I still visit it. It's my mother's living room. Which means it isn't a showroom, and it doesn't have the kind of consistency you'd find in a curated interior. The furniture spans decades. The styles don't always agree. And yet, to me, no space feels warmer, or more alive with the people I love.
Studying space has taught me one thing slowly. A well-decorated room and a long-loved room are not the same thing. Magazine living rooms are flawlessly arranged, but my mother's living room has time settled into it. I still can't put that difference into words exactly. I only know that when I sit here, I sometimes wonder whether the answer to the "good space" I keep chasing has been here all along.
The first thing you notice is the soft yellow light spilling out from inside the tray ceiling. My mother chose this warm tone over cool fluorescents on purpose, I'm sure of it. She knows, better than any of us, how this light falls on our faces when the family gathers in the evening.
One entire wall of the living room opens onto the garden. Green lawn, well-grown trees — the view itself becomes part of the room. I think my father loved this part of the house when they chose it. He was the kind of person who liked sitting quietly and watching the garden. Rain or snow, that big window kept handing the seasons to our family, one day at a time.
If you turn your eyes to the right wall, you'll find a small cross and a porcelain angel hung neatly there now. But this wall used to be a wall for paintings. The one that stayed the longest was a print of the Virgin Mary that my mother loved. With each season — or sometimes just with a shift in her mood — she would change it out for another print, another small painting. Watching her do this, I learned, without anyone teaching me, how much a single piece on a wall can change the feeling of a room. These days, though, she keeps wanting to take things down. She says an emptier wall feels easier. Every time I hear her say it, something in my chest tightens.
The furniture, when you look at it piece by piece, doesn't agree on style or era. Two red floral chairs on the left. A two-seater sofa in a quiet, finely repeated red pattern. A cream-toned single armchair on the right, and an ottoman built into it in the same tone. Someone studying interiors might want to whisper, "shouldn't the tones match a little more?" But every time I'm here, I feel it — these pieces weren't bought all at once. They settled here one by one, over years. Some chairs my mother has kept and cared for a long time. Some cushions she brought home because they caught her eye. Certain seats my younger sibling always claims.
Look closer and you'll see a white cloth draped over the armrests and headrest of the cream armchair, and a floral cloth covering the ottoman that extends from it. I'm someone who believes objects are happiest when used as they were meant to be used. But my mother, not wanting the fabric to fade in the sun, covered them herself. With a big window pouring light into the room, this is her way of caring for what she loves. There isn't only one right answer — and I learn that quietly, watching the same room through her eyes and mine. That single piece of cloth carries her wish to keep good things close for a long time. And I respect that wish.
The red-toned rug is, honestly, a bold choice when you only consider the color. But this living room has taught me — better than any book — how a single rug with real color can hold an entire space together. When the family gathers for holidays, the sofas and chairs around this rug become our seats. My mother, my father, my younger sibling, and me. Four people, sitting around, talking about nothing in particular. That time is quietly accumulating inside these walls.
Every plant, every small painting, every object near the window — my mother placed each one herself. Not by any rule someone taught her, just by what looked right and felt right to her. I'm only starting to understand how difficult that actually is.
I don't know whether this is a beautiful living room, in the way magazines mean it. But I know one thing for certain. This is a room made of love. My mother's hands, my father's quiet preferences, and the traces my sibling and I have left coming and going over the years — all of it has gathered here. Even someone like me, still learning, can see that this kind of room isn't something money can build.
Today, I'm sitting here again, quietly learning how a space comes to look like the people who live in it.
A Few Terms — For Those Learning Alongside Me
Ottoman. A low, backless, armless seat. It works as a footrest, as extra seating when guests come, and as a low table when you put a tray on top. The name traces back to the Ottoman Empire. It softens the center of a living room without dominating it.
Tray ceiling (or coffered ceiling). A ceiling whose center section is recessed upward, like a shallow tray. Hide an indirect light strip along the inner edge and the glow washes across the upper plane, creating a softness that overhead lighting simply cannot match. Common in Korean homes built since the 1990s.
Indirect (or ambient) lighting. Light that doesn't shine directly on you. Instead, it bounces off ceilings or walls and diffuses softly across the room. Shadows soften, and the whole space feels warmer and quieter. Often hidden inside a tray ceiling, behind furniture, or along a wall edge.
Tone. The combined feeling of a color's brightness and saturation — what makes "one red" feel different from "another red." "Matching tones" means gathering colors whose moods sit close together. When tones agree, a room looks calm and composed. When they don't, the room feels richer, more personal. Neither is wrong.
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