Is your living room a place for show, only used when you’re entertaining? Living rooms, as their name suggests, should not only reflect who you are to the outside world, but they should also be lived in. Here are some suggestions for making your living room warm and inviting for guests as well as functional and comfortable for family members.
If your living room is large, divide it into smaller areas through the positioning of furniture. You want the “conversation pit” to be cozy — a couch and loveseat and a couple of chairs around a large cocktail table will seat many people, yet they’ll all be able to hear what the others are saying. A great place for family meetings as well as for entertaining. Make sure all seats are within reach of a table — someplace to set down those drinks and chips!
Face the couch to an architectural focal point, such as a fireplace or a large window that looks out to your garden or the city lights. If you don’t have an architectural element to work with, create one by hanging large pictures or a mural on a wall. This allows people to admire the art and it’s safer than hanging anything heavy right above the seating (especially in areas prone to earthquakes!). Hang cloth wall hangings or small pictures on the wall behind the couch. Don’t, however, hang a mirror where people will see their reflection all the time. Not everyone is thrilled by his or her image.
If you divide your living room in two or three seating and/or dining areas, use rugs to define the conversation grouping, another under the dining table, and another to set off a place to exhibit the Buddha you brought back from Thailand or a wall of bookcases that not only hold your books but also display your collection of antique toys or Bennington pottery. Area rugs work well over waxed hardwood floors or neutral, wall-to-wall Berber-style carpeting.
A decorative room divider, such as Japanese shoji screens, can be used to separate a large room into a living room and a TV room. In a smaller place, face the couch to a wall unit that holds the television — it’s sure to become a favorite gathering spot for the family.
The days of covering the “good” living room furniture with plastic are over! Leather or the new microfiber fabrics are easy to clean, look great, and can survive guests, kids, and pets. If the furniture is in neutral colors, add colorful decorative pillows. Remember to keep a few throw blankets around to stay cozy on cool nights.
If your living room walls are painted in light neutral shades, you’ll be able to change the furniture and decorative touches easily. Other ways to change the look of your living room are by adding tall plants or a silk tree, a permanent flower arrangement in a basket or tall vase, or even a fountain and small pond in a large enough space.
Don’t forget about lighting! Floor lamps, especially in dark corners, can brighten large areas, while table lamps can provide good light for your favorite reading/knitting chair. An arrangement of candles on the mantelpiece or a table adds ambiance to your living room. Now go ahead, live in your living room!
Organizing Your Living Room-Family Room
Generally there is one room in the house where most of the “family living” takes place. In order to have a pleasant and welcoming living area for your family, and a place you can be proud of when you have visitors, you need to come up with some type of organization and storage for your main room, whether it be the living room or family room.
Step back and take a look at your room as a stranger would. Is it cluttered? Are there newspapers, catalogs and magazines pilled up all over the tables? Kids toys thrown all over? Shoes lying around? What is the condition of the furniture, would you feel comfortable sitting on your sofa, or does it obviously belong to the family dog?
One great way to start organizing any room in your house is to start with empty baskets with the name of each family member. Anything that you find in the living room/family room that doesn’t belong in that room goes into that person’s basket. That pair of sneakers, those comic books, that old sweatshirt, the toys. Deliver the basket to the appropriate owner. Once you’ve gone through the clutter, focus on newspapers, catalogs and magazines. Throw out the old ones. If you must have your magazines and catalogs get a nice magazine holder you can put next to your chair.
Now that you’ve cleared most of the clutter take a look around again. Just how dusty was that furniture under all that “stuff”? Get one of those nifty magnet-like dust cloths and dust, dust, dust. It’s likely that once you see clean and shiny surface you’ll be more apt to keep it that way. Use some Windex on your TV and stereo cabinet. Looking much better by now isn’t it? Now it’s time to vacuum. If you have the time, do it thoroughly. Have someone help you pull the sofa and chairs out, vacuum behind them. If you don’t have the time, vacuum around the furniture until you do have the time for a thorough vacuum.
Now it’s time to focus on the furniture. If your sofa has been stained and shredded by the kids and the animals, and if the site of it make you cringe, imagine how your guests feel when you invite them to sit on it. It might be time for a new one. If a new one is out of the question, you can easily give your sofa a new and updated look with a slipcover. There are lots of fitted slipcovers available in wide varieties of colors and patterns and there is sure to be one to suit your decorating taste.
There, wasn’t that easy?
Living Room Ideas Are What Make It A Great Space To Share!
Living room ideas are among the most sought-after designs that people want for the interior of their homes. Living room decorating does, after all, impact the most shared space in the home, and the place where you likely spend the most of your time together.
Therefore, it is important that when you’re decorating your living room, you’re using living room decorating ideas that fit everybody’s tastes, while still being practical, appealing when guests are over, and easy to maintain. However, as so many people discover, such decorating ideas for a living room are often easier said than done. With such a long list of vital criteria, it’s not difficult to understand why!
Within a room with so many different purposes, you may feel that you need an awful lot of tips for decorating a living room in order to make it livable and presentable at the same time. Don’t worry, those tips are out there, and waiting for you to use them.
The following are some great living room decorating tips to help you to create a comfortable, attractive, practical space:
* Be careful when selecting your colors. When decorating a living room, light, and neutral colors are frequently the safest. This way, when you want to choose or change your furniture and accessories, you’ll be able to do so with the most freedom.
* The flooring, when decorating the living room, should be classic looking and durable. This frequently means waxed hardwood floors, or neutral wall-to-wall carpeting that has given flair with area rugs.
* Interior decorating living room means proper furniture positioning. You’ll need to think this out ahead of time. The best strategy to use is to consider the way the people using the room will group within the space. Living room decorating ideas usually divide spaces up into two or three seating areas to provide a cozy setting no matter how many people are there. Decorating ideas for living rooms also usually direct the furniture toward a focal point in the room such as large windows, a fireplace, or a large piece of artwork.
Aside from this, there is no limit to decorating ideas for living room.
How To Quickly And Easily Create A Living Room Furniture Layout?
If you planning to buy new furniture for your living room, then most probably you have already thought about the furniture layout in your mind or else you have probably thought of repeating the same old layout with only the new furniture pieces. In this article I will show you a simple method to create the most efficient layout for your living room.
Before we begin there are a few points that need to be considered. A living room is always a transition space. This means that entrances to all other rooms are located in living room. Other bedrooms, dining room, kitchen etc. are accessed through living room, that’s why a sufficient “circulation space” for family members is a must.
So here is what you can do to create the most efficient layout for a living room.
1) Take a plane white paper. A4 size is also enough.
2) Draw a sketch plan of your living room on this paper. While drawing this plan it is important to show the following things in it.
*Entrance door
*Entrance doors to other rooms
*Window positions
*Minor column projections (if any)
*Swing of the doors (inside or outside the living room)
*Presence of staircase
*Fireplace (if any)
3) Take a pencil and draw lines starting from entrance door to all other doors and window positions. This is the natural travel lines for any person using the living room. If the room is empty without any furniture these are the lines any person would follow to reach other point in the living room.
4) Now start placing the furniture units like 3 seat sofa, single/double seat sofa, coffee table, end tables lampshades, bookshelves, TV unit, etc.. Depending upon your budget you can go for any number of these units.
While placing these units it will always be seen that the furniture obstructs the pencil travel lines drawn in the third step. But that’s OK for now. Now make as may combinations and arrangements of the furniture units as possible. Think out of the box while doing this. Try to do something different.
Remember if you try you will easily come up with at lest 10 layout for that same living room. You will be amazed at how many combinations are possible. Also imagine the furniture pieces you already have or can you replace that table in the bedroom with the one in the living room.
How about keeping it vertical rather that horizontal in the plan. Whatever you do keep one thing in mind. Always keep the human ovement “unobstructed”. People passing through the living room in other rooms must be able to pass without cutting vision if you are talking to other person in the living room.
That’s why those pencil lines have been drawn. After you have drawn the furniture pieces on the living room plan, modify the travel lines. Now these lines will be around the furniture, especially at corners. The travel lines will now take the shape of the furniture at the edges.
After this short exercise you will have probably 5 different layouts on paper with. Select the one in which you see the following points of interest.
*Travel line lengths are shortest.
*Travel lines do not pass trough the furniture.
Apart from the efficiency there is another factor called as visual balance while designing a furniture layout. Finally does it look good to YOU. Are you comfortable with the final layout. The visual balance is achieved by making the most use of all walls of the living room with decorating elements such as paintings, color schemes, etc.
So if you follow a system from the beginning you will be definitely be able to create a beautiful living room in the shortest possible time. I hope this article has helped you to find more creative ways of doing this job more efficiently.
Copyright Shrinivas Vaidya
Hello, lovely readers! I’m Sheila Collins, and I’m delighted to be your trusted guide on this exciting journey of home improvement, design, and lifestyle. As the founder and editor-in-chief of Home Guide Blog, I’m passionate about all things related to homes, and I’m here to share my knowledge, experiences, and insights with you.
