How to decorate a living room: ideas and useful advice
03.2022
Learn how to decorate a perfect living room and make it the best space of your home!
How to decorate your living room: useful tips to create a dream environment
The living room is the nerve centre of every house. The heart of the home, it is the room that, more than any other, preserves special moments and memories experienced with family and friends.
Creating a living room that is both beautiful and functional for the lives of those who use it is therefore fundamental. This is why when you’re thinking of how to decorate a living room there are many questions that must be asked: what function do I want the room to fulfil? What are the elements that should not be missing?
Let’s find out together everything we need to know and how to furnish a perfect living room.
How to furnish a living room: what’s the style
When you find yourself deciding how to furnish a lounge, the first thing that we need to consider is what type of sitting room you want to create.
Mainly, a living room can be:
- A room on its own
- A small living room
- Open plan
If the living room is a classic design and occupies a dedicated room there are certainly less precautions to be taken. In this case the choice of furniture for the living room must, more than anything else, take into account the functionality of the environment, as we will see later.
On the other hand, when you need to decorate a small living room, choosing on the basis of personal taste and functionality isn’t sufficient: you will need to calculate the measurements precisely and choose furniture ad hoc, with reduced dimensions, that allow you to enjoy the space without encumbering it.
Functional and suspended furniture such as the Adda modular drawers, for example, allow you to combine practicality and aesthetics, without impacting on the view.
With regard to more recently built homes, however, a clear and defined delimitation of space between rooms cannot be taken for granted. Often the modern living room is situated in an open plan layout and incorporated with the kitchen or the entrance: in this case, to give more privacy to the living room area it is useful to choose furniture that can be both functional and become useful dividers, like our Colonnata freestanding bookcase.
Choose the function of the room
As we have anticipated, when we are deciding how to decorate a living room a very important aspect to consider is what function we want the front room to fulfil.
When we think about function we need to think about how we are going to use this space. For example, the living room can be:
- A space for relaxation
- A space for reading
If you imagine that you will mainly use the room as a space where you can relax and leave the stress of the world outside, you will certainly need to choose a nice comfortable sofa and a suitable place for the TV, perhaps adding some points of light, such as our Urano lamp, to softly illuminate the room.
If you are a lover of reading and love to relax immersed in the pages of a good book, carve out a space in the lounge that allows you to easily reach your favourite novel: a bookcase full of volumes always creates a beautiful effect! If it is a design element, such as the aforementioned Colonnata bookcase, the resulting space will become even more precious.
Deciding on living room decor: wall coverings
There are no particular rules for wall and floor coverings in a living room: as one of the liveliest rooms in the house, choosing to dare with contrasts or bright colours can be perfect.
However, the basic rules of colour must never be forgotten: light colours enlarge the room, dark colours make it smaller.
So deciding how to combine floor and wall coverings will certainly depend on the size of the room: a small living room with little natural light will certainly need to favour light tones. Our Crema d’Orcia is perfect for adding warmth and light to any living room.
If, on the other hand, you are furnishing a large living room, dark colours can be useful to ensure that the space does not appear too dispersed. A beautiful Pietra d’Avola cladding is ideal to give depth to any room.
Do you want an original effect? Why not embellish your walls using a particular finish, giving your room a subtle but effective touch of style: finishes such as our Infinito, Rain, Bamboo or Stone Tatami allow you to create a modern living room wall that provides the room with a truly unique feel.
The indispensable decor elements
After looking together at the main characteristics to be considered before deciding on the furnishings for a room, let’s now take a look at which categories of living room furnishing accessories, be it small or open plan, used for relaxing or reading, should never be missed.
In fact, whatever destination we want to give to our room, every living room must certainly have these key pieces:
- Surfaces on which to place things
- Comfortable seating
- Ad hoc lighting
- Wall decorations
- Table ornaments
The categories we’ve laid out above are quite broad. Let’s take a closer look together at these different types of product and how best to choose according to the type of room we need to furnish.
Multifunctional surfaces
Inserting various surfaces on which to place things in the living room is a fundamental and highly customised decision: depending on the type of room, the needs change.
If you are furnishing a living room with a dining room, it will be necessary to insert a table of an adequate size: choosing a beautiful and functional table top, like our precious and sustainable Design for Soul table, combines utility and decor, excellent for a room as prominent as the living room.
Is the living room open plan merging with the entrance? Don’t worry: in this case, a surface is necessary to provide a place for everything we want to take out when we enter the house, such as keys or mail. If space is scarce, even simple shelves can work, like our Ciane Vano a Giorno shelves which can serve our needs with minimal effort.
Even if you don’t have any particular needs, the presence of a coffee table in front of the sofa can always be useful to place magazines or the telephone for example, and to highlight precious ornaments.
As you can see here, the two small Dritto tables in Bianco Carrara and the small Love Me, Love Me Not table in Verde Alpi, stand out on the deep Stone Parquet Pietra d’Avola and perfectly accommodate the Lui&Lei tray and the precious Omaggio a Morandi sculptures. At the back, the elegant Pliss sideboard in Bianco Carrara embellishes the wall, providing additional storage space.
All in all a highly functional and stylish environment.
Choose comfortable seating
As we have already said, for everyone a living room is synonymous with family relaxation and comfort.
For this reason, incorporating comfortable seating is essential. To create a living room with a dedicated reading area, you can even choose to install special seating, such as our slim and elegant Curl chaise longue.
For a more communal living room to be lived in together inserting sofas and armchairs that can comfortably accommodate several people is an excellent idea: choose stylish seats that match the rest of the furniture and give a touch of originality to the environment.
This is the case of the living room we are proposing: in this luxury living room, the classic and delicate atmosphere created by the combination of the Stone Parquet in Bianco Carrara and the romantic wall panelling is enlivened by the inclusion of furnishings with modern lines: the sinuous curves of the sofa and the strong lines of the two armchairs are perfectly matched, in terms of line and shade, with the coffee tables and the sculptures.
The precious streaks of marble enrich the Love Me, Love Me Not coffee tables, and Proiezioni and all the precious furnishing accessories: the discreet and elegant Pietra L11 diffuser spreads fragrances throughout the room, specially designed to pay homage to the depth of natural stone.
Bespoke lighting
For a multifunctional place like the living room, when choosing the right lighting we must take into account all the activities that take place in such a vital place.
For this reason, there is often more than one lighting system in the room, and each have their own specific functions.
For relaxing moments, soft lighting that breaks up the darkness but still creates atmosphere is perfect: the previously mentioned Urano lamp is excellent for this use.
A spot of light next to the sofa is very convenient for reading a good book or leafing through a magazine in comfort. Of course, what should never be lacking is good general lighting that covers the whole room.
Choosing a beautiful, elegant, and impressive chandelier allows you to combine style and utility: as you can see in the photo opposite, to illuminate this elegant living room we have chosen a grand yet subtle chandelier, the Silo Ceiling Light in its chandelier version.
This extremely versatile lamp can also be installed individually or in clusters with a combination of three lamps, and its 26 luminous cylinders perfectly illuminate the entire room: on the elegant W Coffee Table, the deep Gravity paperweight in Nero Marquina glows under the lights of this special lamp.
Decorating walls
As we have said, the living room is the most visible place in the house, and as such, its furnishings must be looked after down to the last detail.
A great way to decorate your living room without taking up a lot of important floor space is to decorate the walls. For example, you can use large, brightly lit mirrors, like our Quadro mirror, which is very useful thanks to its frame which provides a perfect base for adding other small living room decorations, or plants anchored to the wall in pot holders.
The most common and versatile choice is certainly hanging art.
The world of wall art is highly varied, and the selection of this crucial living room decor can really reflect our way of being in the room. The art of arranging wall art is a very precise and studied science, with specific rules for organising perfect compositions.
But even a simple composition, if made with quality artworks, can have a stunning effect: in the living room presented here, the precious wall art of the Intarsi collection stands out beautifully on the wall in Plissé Silk Georgette. The black and white of the artworks, created by the alternating colours of Bianco Carrara and Pietra d’Avola, provides a tribute to the ancient technique of inlaying which enhances the natural stone that permeates the room, from the Urano floor lamp to the wonderful Mono vases: the black and white is taken up perfectly by the Ta_Volo Coffee Table and the Dritto coffee table, both in Bianco Carrara and iron. A varied environment, linked by the use of natural stone in all its diverse facets: a true design living room.
Choose elegant decorations for the living room
As a final touch when furnishing an important room like the living room, it is important not to forget to decorate the surfaces as well.
Such a prominent room is ideal for displaying and highlighting precious pieces or those with rich sentimental value.
Sculptures made of marble not only encapsulate the prestige of natural stone, but also have the durability to be a perfect example of an asset handed down from generation to generation: a deeply precious historical value.
Furnishing accessories, such as the ones you can see here, complete any environment perfectly, instilling a touch of naturalness thanks to the use of completely natural materials. In this set up we’re showing you, the aforementioned Omaggi a Morandi sculpture, the Gravity paperweight, along with the very useful and versatile Kilos bookends, unite style and functionality, embellishing the elegant Balnea modular drawers in Silk Georgette®.
Paris has been known as the ‘City of Light’ since the mid-1600s. Under Louis XIV, an extensive network of street lighting was installed throughout the city in an effort to restore law and order, but La Ville-Lumière could just as well be named for its wide light-filled boulevards and stately Haussmanian buildings, faced in the distinctive, luminescent, Lutetian limestone.
Most New Yorkers are too busy for breakfast and either pick up something from the food carts that sit on almost every street corner or subsist on coffee until lunch.
