The living room is a room that is always in view, so it’s the first place you want to decorate beautifully and stylishly. Today, it’s not difficult to come up with your own design – just pay attention to examples of successful projects and follow simple recommendations. In this article, we’ve got both covered!
Color Solutions
Color can transform any room beyond recognition. Being in a bright and open space is much more pleasant than in a gloomy and dull or overly colorful atmosphere. Read on to learn which shades to pay attention to.
White Living Room
White works perfectly for any style, and it’s essential for modern and Scandinavian designs. It’s a very clean color that immediately makes the living room lighter and airier.
Shades of white blend perfectly with the most complex and vibrant tones, making it easy to work with even for inexperienced decorators.
Try painting the walls snow-white, complement it with other cool shades of white, and add bright accents (trendy orange or pink will do the job perfectly).
Beige Living Room
Beige is making a comeback in popularity. Choose very light shades leaning towards the cool spectrum. Sandy and soybean hues are perfect, especially for a living room with a hint of coastal style.
The color can be easily used as a background by painting the walls and furniture in it. A combination of beige with blue always looks beautiful and can be complemented with wood tones, brown, gray, and lush greenery.
Gray Living Room
This is another striking and easy-to-work-with color. To prevent it from looking gloomy, try to dilute it with white as much as possible.
For example, balance light gray walls with a white sofa, rug, coffee table, and chandelier. Or use white and gray striped wallpaper with a white ceiling, dark gray accent furniture – with a white sofa, a rug as a background, pots, and flower stands. You can add a little contrast with black details.
Brown Living Room
Shades of brown are quite calm and neutral, making them perfect as a base color.
Current shades include brown with a touch of purple, gray, cool beige, and natural wood tones. Mix it with gray, white, blue, turquoise, and the same beige shade.
Blue Living Room
The fashionable misty blue looks incredibly good. It’s a subdued and deep color that is beautifully complemented by glass, mirrored, metallic, and softly shimmering details.
You can make the atmosphere cozy with decorative lanterns, flowers, candles, velvet and knitted textiles.
Choosing an Interior Style
To make the living room design in your apartment look complete, it’s essential to determine the stylistic direction within which you’ll be working. This doesn’t mean you have to limit your creative ideas, but there are always fail-safe solutions that you can take advantage of.
Living Room in a Modern Style
A modern interior is a spacious and open room with straight lines and neutral color combinations. At the same time, modern and interesting decor often demonstrates the influence of other styles – from classical elements to Scandinavian minimalism.
Therefore, you can proceed as follows. First, show clear lines – put a rectangular sofa, a square ottoman, a coffee table, a rug, and shelves.
Then, add interesting and seemingly out-of-style objects – an art deco chandelier, a curved armchair, an original floor lamp, or a colorful and glossy decor. Against the background of basic shades, such a picture will look interesting and tasteful.
Choosing a Scandinavian style design is a great solution for northern latitudes, where there is often not enough sun. Light walls and furniture, wide windows, cute pillows and throws, warm wood tones, bright but not garish accent colors – all of this looks fresh and cozy even on a cloudy day.
Living Room in a Loft Style
The loft style is most suitable for a large room with extensive windows. It is characterized by rough details and the prevalence of brick, concrete, and metal surfaces.
Such a living room interior can be quite laconic – with an accent brick wall, a leather sofa, a pair of armchairs, a coffee table, black radiators as decor, and a ceiling chandelier imitating soffits.
Or it can be more complex – a retro loft with fully finished walls in brick masonry, an unfinished concrete ceiling, rough leather sofas, a massive wooden coffee table, metal shelving, a cast iron stove, a fire hydrant, and an imitation of a metal staircase to the second floor.
Living Room in a Modern Classic Style
A modern version of a classic interior is all about elegant restraint. It features organic curved lines, carved legs on furniture, luxurious chandeliers, draped curtains, intricate patterns, proper proportions, and symmetry. There is no room for loud colors or rough details.
To make the design of your living room look stylish, it is important to balance these intricate details. Choose neutral shades as the main color palette, be careful with gold (it should not be too much), floral ornaments, and avoid using cheap-looking materials. Everything should radiate harmony.
Living room in Eastern style
It should be noted that Eastern style can be quite diverse. For example, Japanese minimalism is also an Eastern style of decoration. However, we will explore another way to immerse yourself in the mysterious East within the confines of an urban living room.
Contrasting, vibrant colors and endless ethnic patterns in textiles, low modern-style furniture on thin legs, an abundance of wooden details, exotic plants, and animalistic decor are what distinguish Eastern interiors with a colonial touch.
So feel free to paint the walls in a neutral color, be inspired by the culture of distant countries, and start decorating – the result will surely please and surprise all your guests.
Materials and Finishing
Construction stores offer an endless variety of finishing materials. To avoid confusion and select a fail-safe option for your living room, we suggest familiarizing yourself with our brief overview of the most in-demand and good-looking surfaces.
Wall finishes
Walls are the main backdrop for your living room décor. You can choose to leave them as a clean canvas and coat them in white paint, opting for an easily washable variant. Alternatively, you can select a light shade of gray or beige.
On the other hand, a color accent on one or two walls looks very impressive. For example, the trendy orange on two walls or similar tonal shades of gray-blue and gray-lilac.
Designing the ceiling
When it comes to the living room ceiling, it’s best not to experiment too much and simply paint it white, or leave it unfinished with exposed concrete. Wooden beams are also a popular choice, especially if you have a sloped ceiling.
It’s better to steer clear of complex ceiling constructions, as they have long been out of fashion and tend to make the room feel smaller.
Flooring
The choice of flooring depends on the chosen color scheme of the overall design, the budget allocated for the renovation, and sometimes on the climatic conditions of the region in which the owner lives!
The most common material for modern living room flooring is hardwood. It requires no special care, has a long service life, and a pleasant appearance. By the way, if the living room is small, you can lay the hardwood flooring diagonally – it visually expands the space.
Another popular solution is to use carpeting. This can be either carpet or a rug. Soft, cozy, but it will require more maintenance.
In the case of a hot climate, it is better to stop at ceramic tile or porcelain tile. If you wear slippers indoors or plan to install underfloor heating, this type of flooring is also suitable.
Small Living Room Design Tips
If you have a small living room – this is not a problem. These features can easily be corrected with classic techniques.
- Use multiple types of lighting and opt for light curtains or no curtains at all – light creates the illusion of space;
- Choose glossy details – mirrors, glass vases, and chandeliers, glossy surfaces of furniture reflect and multiply light;
- Choose light colors. Start with the walls – it is best if they are snow-white, bleached beige, or gray (you can still use bright accents).
- Don’t overload the interior of the room with details, as the worst thing that can happen to a small room is a pile of furniture, decor, as well as an abundance of ornaments and patterns on the walls;
- Give preference to light furniture – laconic small-sized furniture made of simple and monochromatic materials does not attract much attention, and also takes up little space, which is not abundant;
Add plants – they always make the decor more airy, as well as freshen and animate it, especially if the interior is monochrome.
Any small room can be made light and easy-going, the main thing is to really want it!
Living room in an apartment – photos of real interiors
You can find even more ideas for decorating your living room design in our collection of photos. Here are the most relevant and easy-to-implement interior designs. Take note!
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