Tips for living room layout

Planning to refresh your living room’s look? Use these tips to make your living room a cozy and inviting place to gather with your loved ones.

Living rooms are those rooms of all homes where friends and family members gather to spend some quality time together. So, they deserve to be planned the right way!

Yet, decorating a space as large as the living room can seem intimidating. It’s the place that needs to appeal to you and your family while also working for everybody in terms of functionality. Ahead, find the tips you need to design your living room.

Measure the entire space

Before you make any move or decision about decorating your living room space, you’ll want to have an accurate sense of its size. After all, properly measuring the area is the best way to ensure that you select the correct size for furniture, rugs, and all the elements that find their place in your design.

Think about it: taking some time to take proper measurements of the space will actually save you a lot of time and money. For example, you won’t waste time and money ordering and returning furniture and accessories because they don’t fit into your living room space as you hoped they would.

Repurpose your old furniture

Whether you’re on a budget or you simply don’t like waste, instead of buying new items to decorate the space, you can repurpose your old furniture to integrate it into your living room’s new design. For example, you don’t need to throw away your old sofa if it is still in good condition. Yet, if it doesn’t look great, purchase a new one made with easy clean sofa fabric that will allow you to clean it properly and maintain its brand-new condition for many years. You can also consider reupholstering your old sofa with a stain resistant fabric. Another idea would be to repaint your old coffee table and use it in the new layout of your living room.

We recommend cleaning your old items well before deciding if their life is over or you can still use them in your design. Chances are you’ll agree that many of your old stuff can work perfectly in your living room’s new design.

Decide the purpose of the room

It may sound weird, but before you start decorating the place, you need to decide on the purpose of the room. Sure, a living room is a place where you invite all your guests. But, when your friends gather at your house, are you planning to sit there and talk for hours or are you planning to watch TV or play PlayStation games? The answer will tell you if you should look towards a conversational layout or a TV watching one.

If your regular meetings with friends typically end up in telling stories for hours, you’d want to add more comfortable seating and place them in a way to form a “conversation pit”.

In contrast, if you think you’ll engage with activities on all sorts of gadgets, you should better focus on elevating your TV viewing.

Set the right mood with colors

The psychology of colors is an interior designer’s best friend. That’s because colors have the power to elevate a space and change it entirely, and this goes beyond making a space look larger or smaller. According to the psychology of colors, each color can trigger a certain atmosphere in a room. Certain colors like green or blue can relax the space, while others like orange or red can energize it. The mood a color can set also depends on how intense and warm or cool the colors are. For example, deep purple shades give a mysterious and luxurious vibe, while lighter purples like lavender and lilac are associated with a calm mood.