5 Fresh style tips for decorating your living room

The living room is one of the most frequently used rooms of any household. For this reason alone, our living room’s entire look can get old, fast. Of course, getting used to the aesthetics isn’t a bad thing, but if you’re the type to mix things up every once in a while, there are a few ways to keep your living room looking “new” and “fresh”, with little compromise to the comfort and personal flair you already have going.

So, without further ado, here are 5 fresh style tips for decorating your living room.

Make Your Room Appear Wider with a Mirror

Adding a huge mirror to one of your room’s walls would give the illusion of a wider room. The clear mirror also gives its audience a clearer view of the room, allowing for more attention to unnoticed details beforehand. Finally, if you’re into symmetry and balance, adding a mirror is one of the best ways to achieve and highlight these traits. 

You can try switching things up every so often by changing the position of the mirror every once in a while. The mirror will naturally draw a lot of attention with each shift, which is always fun when watching for reactions from friends and family.

Paint… the Ceiling

Our walls tend to get most of the attention when it comes to paint jobs, but have you ever considered painting your ceiling? Some eye-catching ceiling designs would be murals that feature nature or the night sky, but even opting for a simple shade of bright blue or even black would have a huge effect on the room’s overall look. The ceiling, after all, takes the most visual space; unlike walls and floors, ceilings tend to be the least blocked by furniture and decor, which is why even changing the colour of this huge space can make a big impact to any room. 

Make sure to choose a colour that matches the look and feel you are going for. You can always take a picture of your living room and edit it digitally to check if the colour you have in mind matches the colour you want, but seeking professional advice can give you a better grasp of the design situation.

Plot Out the Room’s Focal Point

The focal point of a room is the first spot where eyes tend to land when they enter. This could be a huge mirror, a fireplace, an interesting piece of art, or the television set. Since this is the first “sight” of your living room, this is also what makes the first and lasting impression of your room, so planning your room’s focal point ahead will definitely leave a mark on your guests.

As with art and design, bringing out the focal point of the room will require use of lines, shapes, sizes, colours, patterns, and contrast. Our eyes naturally fall to the centre of the room as we enter, but such design techniques will allow you to override this tendency. Lines pointing toward your shelf, your sofa’s colour being in stark contrast with everything else in the room, the larger-than-life clock you have hanging by the window-- these are just examples of what could catch one’s eye, what could be a room’s focal point, in any given room.

Rethink Your Lighting

Lights can be huge players to any room design. The main function of light, after all, is to help us see in the dark. However, lights can go above and beyond its role of lighting up a space. It can help set the mood of a room, and it can also show which spots should receive more focus than the others.

Chandeliers, for example, attract attention to themselves, as they are both a centrepiece and a light source. LED strips, on the other hand, are meant to be hidden and are normally used for ambient lighting, which usually affects the mood. Spotlights can be used for casting attention to art on the wall. There are a lot of effects you can mix and match, depending on the aesthetic of your living room. You can even consider installing light dimmers or smart lights to give you more control over your lights (and so you can experiment with them even further).

Add Some Unexpected Personal Flair

The living room, after all, is supposed to express the kinds of owners it has. Its design will have more of an impact to guests if it communicates something about you. Apart from that, it will feel cosier and more comfortable to stay in because it just feels so… “you”. Throw in some trinkets from your travels, or a few testaments to your hobbies. The quirkier and more unexpected you allow your expression to be, the better. 

If you would like further support for your interior design project, get in touch, and we’d be more than happy to help you.