If you’re thinking about decorating your house to create a harmonious and appealing living space, the first room to check off the list should be your living room. You should consider color, furniture, and how you want to arrange and accessorize your room. This will help you create a cohesive design that flows well and transitions through the rest of your house.
A truly lavish design makes for the ultimate destination, so follow our complete design guide to discover how to decorate your living room and bring your interior space back to life.
Time to Game Plan
You don’t want your living room to feel stuffy or outdated. We do just about everything in our living rooms, and the design should reflect that. If you start decorating or rearranging furniture without any rhyme or reason, your living room will feel incomplete.
Since your living room is the focal point for all sorts of activities from cocktail parties to movie nights, you should design your living room with real life in mind. It’s different for everyone—it might mean a place to read, a place to nap, or a place to host gatherings. Regardless of the event you frequent most often in your living space, develop a layout and furniture plan that takes your needs and your lifestyle into account.
Invest in Some New Furniture
The most common problem people face is not knowing how to arrange living room furniture. You might push a sofa against one wall and a couple of chairs along another wall and call it good. But properly arranging your living room furniture requires much more planning than that. There are important factors to consider like creating a focal point for your eye, creating a conversation space, and considering traffic flow.
Seating
But first, what furniture pieces do you want to include? Big Sandy Superstore carries a huge variety of sofas, sectionals, and loveseats in every style you can imagine. Choose from casual, classic, contemporary, rustic, modern, and mid-century modern with endless upholstery options and finishes. These main seating pieces will most likely take up most of the space and most of your budget, so be sure you’re choosing a piece that’s made to last for years to come.
One way to ensure you love your furniture is to stick with neutral fabric or leather and dark hues that won’t go out of style. You can still dress up your seating with pillows and throws, but neutral upholstery will outlast different wall colors, artwork, and major updates like flooring.
It’s also a good idea to complete your conversation area by adding an accent chair if you have the space available. Don't shy away from vivid colors and bold prints to help take your living room design to the next level. A modern accent chair with geometric prints, floral prints, or even plaid can add great interest to your living quarters. And if you don’t want to sacrifice style for comfort, you can choose a chaise lounge to help complete your room and rest your weary feet.
But we can’t forget about rest and relaxation. If you’re shooting for a more casual design approach, then a recliner is a must-have for your living room furniture list. Choose from traditional to modern looks and even power recliner options, lumbar support, and power headrests if you like all the bells and whistles.
Think About Area Rugs
If you need an easy way to decorate your living room, or your hardwood or tile floors need some attitude and warmth, an area rug can be the perfect solution. Before you make a purchase, the most important consideration is the size. If your area rug is too small for your space, it can make the entire room look disjointed and clash with your furniture. All furniture pieces should be sitting on top of the rug and ideally, there should be about 10 to 20 inches of bare floor between the walls of the room and the edges of the rug.
We carry area rugs in a wide variety of colors, prints, shapes, and sizes, and they can be an excellent way to add some texture to your space. No matter what look you’re going for in your home, we have a rug to fit the mold or stand out completely, including wool rugs, jute rugs, and even handmade varieties that are both soft and durable.
Add Some Decorative Art
Empty walls are a sign of an incomplete and unfinished room. You don’t need to fill every inch of wall space, but incorporating decorative art to fill the bare space is a great way to decorate your living room. Art can be very subjective—what one person considers art can be drastically different than what another person thinks. The best thing to do is to let your heart be your artistic guide.
Once you know what you want to hang and how to arrange it, your living room will become an extension of your taste and personality. Deck out your living room with art pieces that speak to who you are. With our wide selection of paintings and prints, dimensional wall art, and wall art panels, you’ll find something that will capture your unique style. We offer paper art and metallic pieces as well as canvas paintings and framed prints. Drab hallways and empty walls don’t stand a chance in a new and improved living room.
Light up the Room
Lighting can be a complex aspect of any room, especially in a space where there is a lot of traffic and activity. Lighting can warm up your space or cool it down, depending on the type of light you choose. There is ambient, task, and accent lighting that can be placed at different levels throughout the room to highlight different areas without oversaturating your space. Consider overhead chandeliers, floor lamps, table lamps, or pendant lighting.
You can also brighten up a room with the right splash of color. Paint color is something people struggle with, typically because they try to choose the color of the room before they do anything else. It’s best to wait to choose a paint color until you are done furnishing, or select a paint color based off other accent pieces in your living room. A fresh coat of paint brings everything together and pulls out the color from other areas of your décor to truly accent your living space.
Accent with Tables
If you have all your main furniture pieces but it still feels like something is missing, end tables, coffee tables, console tables, and table sets can fill the gaps in your living room and help give your space a refined and finished look—on top of providing a place to set beverages and snacks.
And don’t be afraid to add a combination of materials, such as wood, glass, and metal. Sometimes an overlooked aspect of interior design, a contrast of different textures and materials can make your room more inviting and feel comforting. Tables create a functional space with instant visual interest that is sure to last.
Coffee tables can become a focal point in your living room as the eye is drawn to the shape, and they create a smooth contrast alongside the sofa. They are ultra-functional because everyone needs a place to sit and rest their coffee or cocktail. Furniture pieces with strong lines and bold structures are timeless and match any design element.
Don’t Forget to Have Fun
It’s your living room— you should have fun with it. Choosing furniture and decoration pieces should be an exciting experience and a welcomed opportunity to reflect your bold character and unique eye for design.
Decorations and accessories are more than trinkets; they are an expression of the personality of the homeowner and give you the chance to write your own story. Weaving a little fun into the overall design will allow the space to feel like a true home.
If you’re ready to take the leap and start designing your new living room, give us a call or chat with us today to learn more about a new living room decoration and furniture. Our expert team at Big Sandy is always happy and willing to guide you through our catalog of furniture and home décor.