Living room furniture: 8 ideas to furnish the living area with style
The living room is undoubtedly the most lived-in and important room in the house and often coincides with the largest space available. Whether it is a closed room or shared with the kitchen or dining room, the living room welcomes guests, reserves for us moments of relaxation and leisure and communicates the atmosphere that will be breathed in that house, representing a sort of business card of the entire domestic environment. In addition to being functional and practical, the room should therefore also have its own character and make it shine through in every detail.
But how to furnish the living area with style, making it a welcoming, original and full of personality? Below you will find practical tips to avoid making mistakes and many ideas for tailor-made furniture that takes into account your tastes and your spaces.
Four essential criteria for furnishing the living room without making mistakes
Before getting to the heart, let's start with the fundamentals: four criteria to keep in mind when you are about to furnish a living room, to enhance it and make the most of its spaces, avoiding making mistakes:
- take into account the size and structure of the room
- choose a specific style that blends with the rest of the house
- choose carefully the colors, the chromatic combinations and the use of light
- arrange the furniture with style making the most of the characteristics of the room
The first point is perhaps the most important; in fact, although you may think that personal taste alone guides your decisions, it is necessary to deal with an objective fact: the space you have available and its characteristics. The furnishings and the stylistic and chromatic choices must in fact enhance the room in the best possible way and not simply indulge the owner's tastes and preferences. The right furnishings can even expand the space or make it naturally brighter and more open, as we'll see later.
But now let's develop the other points in detail, and we do it by providing you with 8 useful tips to better furnish your living area.
1. Choose a style
Whether it is classic, modern or design, our living room must be welcoming and have a very specific soul, even better if in harmony with the rest of the house. mobile. Relying on an architect or an interior designer can undoubtedly be a good idea to obtain a complete living room from every point of view and with a modern and captivating design.
If your goal is to create a modern environment, you can opt for an industrial-style living room - with exposed bricks, vintage furniture, metal details and a prevalence of dark colors - tracing the atmosphere of New York open spaces, or focus on minimal and total white of the Scandinavian style, where soft colors and essentiality of shapes and furnishings are the masters.
Another option, increasingly explored, is to choose an essential and modern environment and "contaminate" it with vintage design pieces to give a touch of unparalleled taste and refinement. You will thus see a dark gray floor, beige sofas and crystal tables coexist. with antiques and wooden furniture in warm and coppery colors.
A classic living room, which makes the use of wood and a more important furniture and retro spirit its dominant feature, is always a highly appreciated choice, even if less original and a daughter of our days. Not to make everything too heavy, the advice is to choose to lighten the atmosphere with small pieces of design, minimal furnishings and light colors. After all, the contamination of styles guarantees a result that is always impeccable and full of personality.
2. Colors and brightness
Remember that a living room must have the right light, and in this sense, colors play an essential role, especially those of the walls and floor.
Consider the width of the windows and the natural light that enters your living room, if there is an abundance of it, you can also opt for bolder color choices, which include walls in dark tones, but if not, and if for more the environment were small, resorting to light colored walls would be the ideal choice, not only that, in these cases the use of the mirror helps greatly to expand the space with great effectiveness. Keep in mind that light colors tend to open and brighten, while dark ones to shrink and obviously obscure the environment. warm the environment. Then avoid dark colors and cold tones both on the walls and on the floor: a warm wood floor combined with a dove gray wall is an excellent mix. To create light, in addition to colors - white above all - the right materials come to our aid, such as light wood, glass or glossy textures.
It goes without saying that the choice of curtains is equally essential: the ideal is a color that manages to cover gently, letting the light filter through. Better to avoid heavy and too intense colors, rather reserve them on the walls and leave ample space for the windows and natural light points in your living area.
And the furniture? Also in this case, avoid excesses in one sense or another. For example, total white is undoubtedly a tried and tested style, always appreciated, but it risks being a bit cold; then warm it up with sweeter pieces of furniture, with a vintage touch or with a hint of color. However, the rule is to let yourself be guided by measure and aesthetic sense and if you are a lover of particular and anything but classic colors, reserve them a single piece of furniture or a small part of the living room, otherwise you could get tired soon and feel a sense of oppression. .
The living room must in fact communicate relaxation, calm and a feeling of well-being. The most suitable colors are undoubtedly the classic shades - whether they are light or dark - sage green, dove gray, taupe, shades of beiges, nude pinks and warmer browns. This does not mean that a red armchair or a brightly colored piece of furniture can add a decidedly glam touch to the whole.
3. Choose the sofa carefully
The sofa, and the area that surrounds it, is undoubtedly the heart of the living room, but it is essential to choose it of the right size and proportions, also in relation to the width and depth of the room that contains it. For example, if it were too large, it would further shrink an already small and cramped environment.
In any case, avoid an oversize sofa even in large and spacious environments, rather choose two sofas of maximum two and a half seats each, which are also more comfortable, and, if space permits, add one or two armchairs, even of styles or different colors, to make the area more original and suggest a "glam allure" as a whole.
Greater freedom of choice on colors, even if too light colors get dirty more easily; It is true that in these cases, sofa covers or blankets - monochrome or patterned - can come to our aid, expertly placed on a large part of the surface so as to repair it and give it a fashion touch of a true interior designer.
However, remember that a sofa, in addition to being beautiful, must also be practical and functional: an excellent choice, in this sense, is a sofa bed, useful for hosting friends and making the living room a real bedroom when needed. in this case, however, pay attention to the size of the room or you would risk not moving once it is open.
4. Ideas to complete the conversation and TV area
As already mentioned, armchairs, chairs, stools or poufs enrich the relaxation area surrounding our sofa. Furnishing accessories that in addition to being useful as types of seats, can represent real design objects capable of giving style and personality to the entire living room. Even a chair recovered from old family furnishings and a little marked by time , a brightly colored pouf or a design stool can be such a fine detail as to give a fashion boost to our living area. A small touch or an artfully designed accessory is enough to completely revolutionize the concept of traditional living room.
5. The importance of the carpet
Often underestimated and chosen without care, the carpet represents a fundamental detail capable of warming the environment and completing the relaxation area with style, dividing it from other portions of the room. However, it is essential to choose the right size: it must not be disproportionate to the width of the sofa and other surrounding furnishings. Even the pattern and colors must be in balance with the predominant colors of the living area and the floor itself.
You can also use several carpets, with different shapes and patterns, to be placed in strategic points of your living room, also taking advantage of unused portions of the floor or the narrowest parts of the corridors.
6. Complete the living area: how to place the furniture in the living room
In most cases, you choose to place a low table in front of the sofa, a practical support surface - with the most varied shapes and materials - for newspapers, magazines, books, vases and remote controls. In larger and more spacious rooms, side tables can also be added, which are in harmony from a stylistic and chromatic point of view with the central one.
In some cases, there are already equipped walls including everything you need: from the furniture intended for the TV to various shelves that act as decomposed bookcases to closed and open shelves for various use. Alternatively, you can furnish the wall on which the TV will rest, choosing the furnishings that are most in line with your style. For smaller rooms you can use practical space-saving furniture, ideal solutions to combine design and functionality, allowing you to make the most of the little space available without sacrificing style.
If the dimensions allow it, however, the ideal would be to divide the conversation corner from that of the TV, and therefore to reserve a piece of furniture with the TV and adjoining seats for another area of the living room.
Inevitable for a self-respecting living room a bookcase, better if large and spacious, which gives character and allows you to enrich the environment with volumes and colors. It would be ideal to place it on a large wall, which also surrounds the TV cabinet, and that alternates in itself shelves full of books with others less loaded, more similar to shelves with ornaments and frames, to suggest greater rhythm in the whole.
Sideboards, more or less large, with a classic or modern style, and sideboards with a retro or design spirit are other perfect furnishing accessories to enrich our room, taking into account its size.
Finally, a round or rectangular table - even better if it can be extended to have lunch in the living room - closes the circle of furniture that must make up a welcoming living room equipped with all comforts.
7. Accessories and attention to detail
After seeing the essential furnishings and how to arrange them in an original and functional way, let's focus on the details: small furnishings and accessories that can make the difference and further define the style and soul of our living room. And it is precisely here that you can give greater vent to your personal taste!
From cushions placed on sofas and armchairs to knick-knacks and antiques of various kinds, up to vases, backsplashes, clocks and lamps. In short, everything you consider can give an extra touch to your living area, talking about you and telling a piece of your story.
Let's not forget the plants to choose carefully and place according to the light and the conditions they need.
However, remember to keep in mind a concept that is always valid: do not overload your living room with elements and objects, which would thus be much smaller and "messy", but take care to leave a little healthy emptiness, not only to give more charm to the your living room but also to communicate more space and airiness to the room.
8. On the walls
Also on the walls let yourself be guided by measure and balance: reserve an important picture for the larger wall, especially if the environment is not too spacious, and on the others play with frames of various sizes, developed both horizontally and in height, especially if the walls are not very high.
Even frames with photos or mirrors, especially where the room is particularly small and cramped, are a real panacea to give life to the living room, but remember to always take into account the proportions.
Then there are shelves or broken design bookcases that can be used for the widest wall of the room, but even in that case, take care not to overdo it with the other furnishing accessories: it is not an art exhibition, but a welcoming living room. and relaxing in which to find serenity, leisure and desire to share.
