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Thursday, December 2, 2010

Living Room Decorating - 4 Easy Steps

If this post title interested you then we have to assume you are stuck on ideas for living room decorating. Let's break it down into manageable steps and throw in some inspiration images to get your creative processes flowing and hopefully churn out a new look and feel to your home. 


Function 

Define how you use your living room. Remember, this is YOUR home, not a waiting room for kings and queens. Is it formal and used only for company? Is it full of kids and newspapers, is it a place to wind down at night and watch tv?

These are questions to ask yourself. Figure out the function and purpose of the room and let your living room decorating play off of that.

If you don't have much traffic in the living room maybe you want to take a classy approach with nice home accents and area rugs that won't get damaged from kids and pets and things. You can display nicer quality or memorable items in a room of this style where it is least likely to get damaged.


Are you a family full of toddlers or teens?

Are your pets part of your family?

You might want to look at storage solutions, a place for everything-everything in it's place.

Use this storage as part of your design in the way of baskets, pretty boxes and trunks. Take a trip to the store you will be amazed how creative manufacturers have gotten with storage bins. They are really attractive now. 

If this is your main tv room then maybe think about layout and comfortable inviting furniture to lounge in. 

Once you decide the function of your space then the next living room decorating step is to choose the theme you want to create, what look and feel you want to develop.

Theme

Theme does not  mean strawberries and chickens. That in most cases falls under the category of collections. Theme means a cohesive look and feel in a particular area. Your theme can be a style such as traditional or contemporary. Don't overlook color as your theme in any situation. Color is free and it packs a huge punch in design and can go along way toward living room decorating.

Your theme might be minimalist, less is more design.

Organized chaos might be your theme, organize all your stuff so it has a home to rest and looks good doing it. Always keep your chaos in it's place and still enjoy all the things people have in their living rooms like remotes, game controllers, papers, dog leashes, pens, toothpicks... oh sorry I got off track. Look at pictures on the internet-get inspired before you start you living room decorating.

Balance 

I am a balance freak! If something is out of balance in a room I notice it immediately, I feel it although I might not recognize what the imbalance is at the time, I still feel the unrest. 

Balance needs to flow throughout a room. If you have all your furniture shoved up against the walls, the balance will be off in the middle of the room.

Don't put all your tall furniture on one end it will feel like your leaning visually. Notice your home accents in the room, are they balanced? Are those pictures hung evenly throughout the room at a similar height. You can balance your accessories simply by using a tall plant on one side and a lamp on a table on the other creating the same height when your eyes scan the room.

~Eye level is different for everyone. Some people are 5' some people are 6'. If you are uncertain, choose a standard eye level and place pictures evenly from the top of the sofa to the top of the ceiling as if the ceiling were 8'. ~

Don't cut your curtains off at the window sill, this just cuts your room off horizontally in the room. No one likes to get cut off.  

You figure out your function, what theme works best with that function, balance your furniture and accessories with the architecture of the room and add some contrast so it doesn't feel boring. 

Contrast 

Contrast is an overlooked gem when considering living room decorating.

Contrast can be achieved with such small amounts of color or opposing styles. This can be a pop of color in a monochromatic space, this might mean a modern sofa or chair with an antique sideboard. Contrast can be used to make elements of a room stand out that otherwise may have gone unnoticed. 

You have the breakdown, you have the tools now.

Do your research and get creative so your living room decorating has the look and feel you are trying to achieve.

Be sure to bookmark this post so you can come back and comment with your outcome. Email us some pictures we just might post them as a follow up.

Take a look at the room scenes in this post and with the steps outlined above see if can pick out the function, theme, balance, and contrast in the images.






Living Room Design-5 Easy Steps
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5694503-Copyright (c) 123RF Stock Photos
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