Six Tips For Decorating Your Living Room

A living room should encourage your guests and your family
to spend a little while dallying. This can be done by
arranging the furniture in ways that encourage conversation
or sitting by a fire. Lighting should be sufficient for
reading books or magazines or watching television. There
should be good conversation starters like a book or
interesting artwork or statues to help provide a cultural
backdrop. Adding live elements like plants or an aquarium
can raise the energy level of the room. Color within your
living room is better in warmer tones to evoke a comforting
response. If the room is small, the space arrangement is
even more important and one should strive for the illusion
of space through mirrors or by sizing the furniture in such
a way that it doesn't overpower the room.

Placement Of Furniture

Whether you believe in Feng Shui or not, the placement of
furniture to allow people to freely move around the room is
important. A living room should feel spacious even when it
is not. The placement of chairs should allow for some to be
next to the fireplace to make it more inviting. Furniture
should be spaced so that people can hear each other in
normal conversation without having to lean over or move the
furniture. The furniture should not block entryways but
give a clear view of different entrances.

Lighting

Natural lighting as well as artificial lighting is very
important. The living room should be lit with both, one for
during the day and the other at night. Lamps can become
design statements nowadays. Choose them to complement
whatever design theme you have going. Be sure to provide
sufficient light for nighttime reading.

Conversation Starters

Artwork, statues, books are all great conversation
starters. They help to provide color and a lively
environment. They also allow you to give the room a
personable feel. Adding books or magazine caddies can help
a person resolve to spend some time making them comfortable
in your living room.

Natural Or Live Elements

Natural plants not only provide fresh oxygen for the living
room and help to use up toxic degassing from carpets, but
they also make the room feel more natural too. Adding a few
plants help to bring the outdoors in and give the room a
healing aura. Pets do the same thing. Pets provide a loving
acceptance that radiates joy in living. Just make sure the
pets you get are house-trained and low maintenance. Pets
can form a sort of living statue that moves around the room
and capture's your guests' attention.

Color

You can design the room by using color in your drapes, your
furniture, and even your walls. If you are a bit
adventuresome, choose to paint one wall a different color
than the rest, particularly if it has a fireplace on it.
This will draw the eye to the best feature in the room.
Other ways of adding color are to wallpaper the room. Try
to go with warm or natural colors to help people feel more
settled when they are in the room.

Creating More Space

If your living room is small, you will need to give the
illusion of space to help the room feel inviting. You can
do this by adding a big mirror to a wall. There are even
mirrored panels that make a nice backsplash too. You can
pick furniture that is sized appropriately for the room,
even if your heart is on a larger set. In the end the
larger set may overwhelm the room making it feel cramped.
Keep the end tables and coffee table in glass or metal
formats with lots of visual space around them. This adds
the illusion of sparseness that you don't get with wood.


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