We Hired An Amazing Interior Designer To Transform Our Favorite Films Into Living Room Concepts

Ever loved a movie so much, you wished you could live in it?

We know how you feel. So we hired an amazing interior designer to transform our favorite films into living room concepts.

My name’s Craig, and I run a helpful home blog over at ApplianceAnalysts. We mostly focus on helping folks repair and get the most of their appliances, but we also cover more general home and garden topics too.

I wanted to do something fun on the website, and I’ve always loved movies. Not just for the thrill, but for the feel you get when you watch them. It’s like you’re in another world! While we can’t fully transform our lives into a movie, we can bring touches of that style into our homes. That’s when I started wondering “just how much like a movie could someone make their home?” Designing a whole home was a bit over the top, so we went with living rooms!

It was a real challenge to balance good design (we wanted the living rooms to be modern and livable), while still staying true to the movies. After over 100 hours of interior design, I think we managed to pull it off.

We hope that these rooms inspire you to include a touch of your own favorite movies into your own home.

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When it comes to movie sets, there aren’t many cozier places than the Hobbit homes of the shire.

Inspired by their book-loving, food-loving ways, we designed a modern take on Bag End – this time made for a human. While our homes aren’t designed for 4-foot tall hobbits, we can translate their wooden cottage feel into a modern country home.

As the main focus of the room, the oval opening in the interior wall transforms the rear bookcases into a hideaway writer’s nook – complete with a writing table.

While Hobbit windows are often short and round, we humans tend to be a little taller. We had to accept that small round windows would feel more like a prison cell than a cottage, so we compromised with a taller window finished with a circular design. Most importantly, the room has lots of space for entertaining guests visiting on party business. Even if that’s a small clan of dwarves turning up uninvited for dinner.

The most challenging part was balancing realistic interior design while still staying true to movies. You may love how the hobbit homes look in Lord of the Rings, but they’re also made for people who are four feet tall! Translating that into a human-sized home, and giving it a modern look and feel, was where the challenges lay. Each living room had its own creative challenges, but that was part of the fun.

Whether you’re coming home from a long day of hacking into networks, training in multiple martial arts, or shopping for trench coats, every modern-day coder needs their own Matrix retreat.

We’ve translated the feel of the Matrix into a modern city apartment fit for any would-be Neo. The color scheme was our main focus – combining a mixture of dark colors with green LED lighting to match the aesthetic of the movie. The vertical and horizontal light strips are an homage to the infamous scrolling computer text.

While the apartment appears dark and atmospheric, having large windows will still allow the space to feel bright and open during the day. The LED lights would also be controllable lighting, allowing plenty of customization to the space if you’re not always feeling the green.

We weren’t sure if a full setup of 9 screens and 3 keyboards would fit this more contemporary space, but the dining table leaves enough opportunity for any modern remote worker to get a good work shift in.

Moving on from the ’90s, we brought Morpheus’ seat into the modern-day with a sleeker black chair. Though we kept the old rotary phone – leaving a touch of the movie set in the apartment (don’t worry, you can get modern wireless versions of those antique phones).

While not a blockbuster like the other movies on this list, we couldn’t resist creating a modern take on Amelie’s Paris apartment.

Amelie is famous within design circles for the color scheme of green and red seen throughout the movie – used to highlight parts of Amelie’s personality and her feelings in scenes.

We’ve followed that color theme here while adding a more modern sense of space. By preserving blank space on the walls with larger windows, we transform Amelie’s small Paris apartment into a more modern, open, and breathable space.

We aimed to keep the same quirkiness of Amelie’s possessions with a bohemian collection that she’d curate from Parisian thrift stores. All it needs now is a few quirky neighbors for her to lend a helping hand.

If you’re a Wes Anderson fan, you’ll already know how famous his films are for their cinematography. In particular for their symmetrical set designs and matching color schemes.

The Grand Budapest Hotel is a great example, with the pink monochromatic color scheme dazzling cinema-goers everywhere when it was released in 2014.

We’ve recreated this style in our ‘Lobby’ living room – keeping with the pink and white color scheme. The ’70s-inspired mirrors and tables create an open and symmetrical space, leaving all focus on the center of the room (as in Anderson’s sets).

The two alcoves add a signature stamp on the room, which could also be windows if you’re looking to copy traces of this design. Finished with touches of brass and gold, we think this would be a great living (or waiting) room for any lobby boy to attend to.

Once you’ve crossed off your Death List Five and sheathed your katana, you need an inviting living room to enjoy a bowl of tea and unwind.

Combining influences from Kill Bill and other Japanese touches, we’ve created this hillside retreat fit for any modern samurai. We’ve made sure to leave plenty of space to practice your sword techniques, and great visibility to watch out for any enemies approaching your zen palace.

If you’ve seen the movie, you know we needed to include the yellow and black colors within the room. Acting as the centerpiece, we started with the couch and constructed the room around it.

I know – A post-apocalyptic desert isn’t the most typical inspiration for a living room. I just can’t help but love the raw set designs of the Mad Max universe. A world put together with sun-scorched metal leads to some unique design choices, and made us think a little differently.

One ever-present aspect of the desert is the glaring sun, which we incorporated with a large circular window and maintained throughout the color scheme.

Unlike our other rooms, this industrial living room contains almost no wood – instead of relying on metal for most of the elements.

My personal favorite is the jeep-wheel side table to the left of the couch.

So now if you ever move into an attic with hanging wires and a corrugated iron section of wall, I don’t want to hear you complaining that you can’t make it look good!

This was our first time working on something like this, but it’s been a real joy and we’re hoping to do more like it in the future.