With the right interior design tactics, even the smallest of homes can feel like a giant mansion. By carefully selecting your furniture and interior decorating, you can make your home look and feel significantly bigger than it really is.
These eight tips will help you create a living room that's far more expansive, more comfortable, and more spacious than its square footage might make it seem. From apartments to country homes, try these tips to super-size your living room.
1. Combine your living room, dining room, and kitchen
One of the best ways to make your home feel bigger is to remove interior walls that do nothing but divide rooms. Create an open plan living space that combines living, cooking, and dining for the ultimate spacious interior space.
2. Choose furniture that's sized appropriately
Nothing makes a room feel cramped and uncomfortable like furniture that's just too big. Choose sofas, recliners, tables, and entertainment units that are the right size for your living room - too big, and it could end up feeling claustrophobic.
3. Align your furniture with a single focal point
Great interior design means picking a single focal point - for most living rooms, the television - and directing all furniture towards it. Point your main sofa at your focal point and use end tables, a coffee table, and a recliner to create balance.
4. Keep entrances wide and spacious
Is your main entrance connected to your living room? If so, make sure the entrance itself is wide, spacious, and unblocked by walls or shelving. The first impression you receive when entering counts for a lot - make sure your one is open and spacious.
5. Keep work equipment out of the living room
Make your home feel less like a workspace by keeping desks and computers out of the living room. Create a small office in your spare bedroom for working, and avoid cramping up your living room with an unwelcome work desk.
6. Focus on maximising natural light
Natural light is an incredibly effective tool for increasing the perceived size of any room. Make sure your living room has large windows or exterior doors, as well as plenty of mirrors for reflecting light throughout the living space
7. Choose your accessories carefully
Accessories can be the difference between a generic living room and a spacious, impressive feat of interior design. Carefully select your paintings, shelving, and decorations to create a room that seems spacious and full of character.
8. Avoid bright or powerful colours
The key to creating visual space is using white to your advantage. Try to avoid using any overly dark colours - black, brown, or dark grey - or overly powerful colours - red, pink, or orange - to create a more neutral, spacious living space.
9. Embrace Frameless Glazing
In the quest to optimise your properties exposure to natural light, you may wish to consider investing in frameless glazing. This can be applied to either doors or windows, and it is particularly effective when used in either the kitchen or living room.
The Bottom Line
There are always a host of prominent home design trends to choose from, while these are also subject to constant and unpredictable change. With this in mind, following the latest design trends can be extremely challenging, and it is therefore important that you look to develop an independent sense of style prior to refurbishing your living room. This makes it far easier to create an effective design philosophy, which is true to your personality and also conducive to a warm, friendly and inviting living environment. Without this, you may find yourself left with a home that feels cold and strangely detached.
This post was written by Joyce on behalf of AHF. Whether you need to purchase a chest of drawers or a number of end tables, this firm is well placed to help meet your needs.
