Living rooms are by far one of the most used areas of any home (besides the kitchen, of course!) It's where you lounge, entertain, relax and spend most of your time with family and friends – so it's understandable that over time it might seem redundant in style and decor. Luckily for you, living rooms are one of the easiest areas of the home to change up and renew, and on an average budget.
Injecting colour, changing the lighting, and adding plants and flowers to your environment are just some of the options available to you and most can be planned and completed in a weekend's time! Looking to make a more permanent renewal to your living room? Considering new furniture as an option? We have some great ideas where you can use smaller furnishings to truly change the entire look of your living space with minimal assembly and money! Check out our six tips and tricks below for a stunning new atmosphere!
A fresh coat of paint is always a great idea, even if you choose the same colour as before! However, we suggest trying a different palette. Look at all the furnishings and decor you wish to keep in your home and consider several shades that would appropriately fall within this colour palette! As seen in this example, don't be scared to decide on two colours instead of one – using two comparatively similar shades (like two pastels) can really work in your favour when it comes to interior design tips and tricks.
Notice how the brighter shade of blue used for the sofa perfectly mixes with the lighter, more gentle shade of blue used on the wall colour and the large-format art work. The key to livening up your living room is to pull inspiration from pre-existing items – and art work is always a great start.
Want a bold colour to perk up your living room? Check out this stark blue living room to see how much colour can transform any space!
You can, believe it or not, get to a point to where you are over-accessorising your home. We are sure most of you might have had this realization at one point or another! If you're looking for a clean slate with the new year, then decide on the items that mean the most to you – whether it's a family portrait or a favourite little item you purchased from a flea market – and only keep these. Throw the rest in storage, or sell them! Once this is complete consider unique and one-of-a-kind accessories that will stand out in your living space. Try new shelving techniques, throw your art in different, mix-matching frames, or grab some distinctive flower vases and throw in a fresh bouquet. An eclectic mix of items surprisingly goes well together and will give your space a fresh, new feel.
Curating is the new trend when it comes to interior design – even fashion designers are tapping into this uncharted territory of curating special rooms for magazine ads and editorial spreads. You should consider curating
your own living room such as this one – add special features, try unique items, and play around with organizational techniques to make it a space all your own.
Lighting is all about your source and how you decide to expose it! Get rid of those blinds and curtains and opt for textured sheers to bring the most natural light as possible into your space. As for artificial light, if you're not willing to purchase new fixtures or lamps, then be strategic about your placement.
A great suggestion is to open up all windows fully in broad daylight and carefully examine the parts of your room that seem rather dark – this will usually be corners and the areas farthest from direct light. These locations are where you should be thinking about table lamps and floor lamps.
Have any great, large-format decor or great art works in your living room? How about you bring out their full potential by highlighting them with soft spotlights? Generally, these are affordable and are quite easy to install. You can even purchase battery-powered spotlights for the easiest installment and as you redecorate your living room you can move them where you like! There is nothing better than versatile lighting!
Having a proper place to rest in your living room is a given! However, we want you to reconsider what it means to create a relaxation place – because it requires more than a cosy sofa. For an ultimate place to rest you should consider proper seating, perhaps a reading corner, plush pillows and soft, plush throws.
This example is great because the electric fireplace and hobby corner provide two key places for both you and your guests to properly sit down and rest while maintaining a sense of togetherness. If you would like to use pre-existing furniture and accessories to make a rest space happen for budget reasons, rearrange the furnishings in your living room in a circular pattern, gathering them around one key element of the room – whether that be the fireplace, a great coffee table, or an area rug and a work of art on the wall. Strategic seating is an option you can think about in any room of your home.
Check out the great seating arrangement in this living room – it's large and everyone has their own resting place, yet it creates a great sense of comfort and togetherness for late-night talks!
For a quick, cheap way to revive your living room, think about purchasing (or making!) a new coffee table! If you choose to DIY this option, think about the current trends of using repurposed wood, staining it which ever shade you like and attaching hairpin legs or any other type of legs that would make the table unique to you.
Most of the time, homeowners think that coffee tables need to be quite large and can often be the second largest item in a living room besides a couch or sofa – we want you to rethink this! Look at the example shown here - the designer has used two, smaller tables of differing shades of wood grain to work as one coffee table element. This is a great option if you're looking to both stick within a budget and simplify your life. It's nearly impossible to store and stack too many accessories and magazines on these tables – and we see that as a good thing!
Last but not least – plants and flowers! The great part about plants is that you can choose from hundreds, if not thousands, of indoor plant options and you can choose how permanent of a fixture they become! In this living/dining room combined, the designer chose to install permanent plant fixtures in the space along the stairway – which would have normally gone as unused, wasted space! Yes, you could place a storage compartment or dresser here, but the inclusion of plants adds a special, modern and minimalist touch to this well-decorated space – whereas any type of furnishing would have made the room too congested.
When thinking about plants, choose plants that do well with minimal sun, and for low maintenance choose tropical plants – such as aloe vera, pothos plants or cacti. Not only are these plants cheap to purchase and low maintenance, but they also have unique air-filtering abilities to keep your interior air fresh and healthy!
To find out more about what plants can help you to clean your air, check out this Ideabook!