Living Room Decorating

Next to the kitchen, the living room is, well, where your family lives. Ours is right next to the kitchen, and we like talking to each other while I cook, or wash dishes.

It’s only natural to want to place the furniture where the people in the room can converse comfortably, but when decorating a new home, why not think outside of the box a bit? Is it possible to arrange the seating to make conversation, magazine reading, and television viewing comfortable without looking contrived or strained? Experiment!

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Think back a bit. What was it about your old living room decorating that you didn’t like?

What can you do in this new living room to change that?

Do your present living room decorating ideas evoke a warm feeling in the room, or cause your family and guests to move out of the living room to another place to congregate, say the kitchen, even when the TV is playing? Pay attention to silent signals and don’t be afraid to change a seating arrangement when it obviously is not working. Again, you may need to experiment!

I also found that two full size sofas worked better in our living room versus a sofa and a love seat. We moved the love seat to another place in the house and added a sofa to the other one. The difference in cost between the new love seat and the sofa was only $179 and we are much more comfortable with two full size sofas instead of the smaller love seat in the living room. Being able to sprawl out comfortably is important, especially if you have several members of your family in the room at the same time.

And in my new living room decorating scheme, I placed most of my decorating items on the bookshelves in the living room to reduce the number of the items on the tables. This gave our room a clean, organized look and still enabled me to enjoy my things without the look of being cluttered. I also put a small basket on the bookshelf next to the TV to collect all of the remotes, which were always being misplaced. I also put a large, low basket under the living room coffee table to collect magazines, books, crayons, jars of peanuts, snacks, etc. which were always sprawled out on the table and floor at our old house. Each evening I put everything away under there and it just makes me feel better to wake up to a clutter free living room that is warm and inviting for morning coffee.

Instead of more expensive pull drapes and hardware, I chose to buy crystal-studded metal tiebacks to hold back the drapes and allow natural light to stream into our home. I have had a lot of people comment on these $10 a pair items, because they look much more expensive than they are. I have a lot of windows in my house, and I couldn’t afford to buy the expensive hardware to hold the drapes out of the way, and most of my drapes were not pinch pleated, so I had to think of way to re-use them inexpensively. I have much more to say about curtains on the Curtains page.

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