The living room is such an important space in your home.
It’s a place where you can leave all of the stresses of life behind and just relax for a while. That’s a lot harder to achieve if the space isn’t very big. In an ideal world, you’d have a huge house with a large living room but that’s not always possible and sometimes, you’ve just got to work with what you’ve got. If you decorate a small living room wrong, you’ll end up with a dark and dingy space that you don’t want to spend time in at all. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Decorating a small living room is hard, but it’s not impossible if you use these basic tips.
Trick #1: Storage Is Key
When you’re already working with a small space, filling it up with clutter is only going to make things worse. Getting rid of things that you don’t need is a start but either way, you’ll still have a lot of stuff lying around. That’s why storage space is key in a small living room. If you have a place to put everything away when you’re not using it, you can keep the space tidy and give the impression of space.
Storage can be hard when you don’t have that much room because large pieces of furniture like drawers are going to take up far too much space. In a small living room, you need to be a bit more inventive with your storage and find things that have 2 functions. For example, you can use a nice chest in the center of the room as a coffee table that doubles up as storage. You can get some great sofas and stools with storage under the seats as well which ad a lot of storage without taking up any extra floor space.
Trick #2: Bring The Outdoors In
If you can bring the outdoor spaces into the living room, it’ll make it feel a lot more open and airy. There are a couple of ways to do this. If the living room backs onto the garden, it’s worth considering putting some french patio doors in that open into the garden. You can open them up in the summer and blur those boundaries so the space extends outwards.
Even in the winter when it isn’t warm enough to keep the doors open, having a line of sight that extends into the garden will make the space feel larger. It’s also a great way to get a lot more light into the room which is essential. If you don’t have the option of putting patio doors in, you can consider extending your windows so you’ve got a better view of the garden and even just get some house plants in there.
Trick #3: Draw The Eye Upwards
Decorating a small living room is all about illusion. The problem isn’t that the space is too small to be livable, it’s that it feels too small. If you can trick your brain into thinking that the space is larger than it is, you’ll feel a lot more comfortable in there. All of the space around the ceilings is wasted unless you draw the eye towards it. Using tall bookshelves is a great way to use the vertical space to increase storage and give the illusion of space.
Hanging curtains higher up and putting in tall standing lamps are great tricks as well. You should also consider this when you’re picking patterns for wallpaper. If you make use of vertical stripes or geometric patterns in the right way, you can open up a lot of that space near the ceilings as well. By drawing attention to the vertical space, you can create the illusion of a far more open space.
Trick #4: Consider Visual Weight
Visual weight is a very important concept when you’re decorating small spaces. Obviously, it’s important that you don’t choose large pieces of furniture that take up all of the small space, but even smaller pieces can make a room feel cramped if you don’t choose well. The visual weight of a piece refers to how heavy and large you perceive it to be. For example, a coffee table with thick wooden legs has a much larger visual weight than a more sleek one with thinner legs, even if the actual tabletop is exactly the same size. It’s important that you keep this in mind when you’re picking furniture and try to go for more streamlined pieces that don’t have a very large visual weight.
Trick #5: Choose The Right Color Scheme
Light is important in a small space and the color scheme that you choose will have a big impact on that. Darker shades will suck up any light in the room so, even if you’ve got a lot of good lighting around the room, it’ll still feel dark and dingy in there. You need to choose lighter shades that will reflect light around the room and open it up. That doesn’t mean you can’t use any dark colors at all, but you should avoid putting them on the walls. You can get away with it if you have a feature wall as long as you offset it with light shades on the other walls.
When you’re using plain, lighter shades on the walls, things can look a bit bare. You should use accessories to inject a bit more color into the room without making it feel claustrophobic. For example, a deep red sofa is going to suck up a lot of light, but a cream sofa with some red cushions on is fine. It’s all about balance so be sparing with color and don’t overdo it.
Decorating a small living room isn’t just about making the space physically bigger. You can use clever storage to stop it from getting cluttered and be conservative with your furniture so you don’t eat up too much floor space, but the best way to improve the room is by giving the impression of space using these clever decorating tips.
