Your living room is essential in your home as it serves as a place of relaxation and where you spend quality time with your family. It also serves as the first impression of your home to guests. Therefore, a lot goes into decorating and designing your living room space and creating an ambiance that complements your home and makes your living room space enjoyable. However, to achieve this, you must adopt the right design strategy and style to ensure you create a living room space you are content with. Knowing the design mistakes you must avoid would help you make the right choices concerning your living room space to get the most out of it. On that note, here are some design mistakes to avoid when decorating your living room space.
- Failing to plan your layout
A common mistake many people make when decorating their living room is not planning the layout. Planning the living room layout gives you a preview of what your preferred design and decor idea would look like. This, in effect, ensures that you avoid wasting money on items that may not serve your living room. Additionally, a plan can prevent future problems, such as constant repositioning of items, clutter, and dullness. When planning the layout, you should consider various factors. These include the space available, the focal point of the room, the theme, and furniture placement.
- Choosing ill-fitting furniture
Your living room is pretty nonfunctional without furniture. When purchasing furniture for your living room, you may be more particular about the colors, textures, and styles. However, an important element you must consider is the size of the furniture. Purchasing large furniture pieces makes your living room space look overcrowded and cluttered. It also makes everything in it look disproportionate. However, on the other hand, small furniture would make your living room space look vacant and highlight the negative space in the room. Choosing ill-fitting furniture goes beyond your couch or table. Even the rugs and carpets come into play. Choosing the wrong-sized rug or carpet breaks the harmony in decor within the living room, causing a disproportionate dimension to the space. Therefore, be sure to always purchase rugs and carpets of suitable sizes for your living room.
- Placing your furniture against the wall
It may not seem like a big deal, but placing your furniture against the wall is a design flaw in most living rooms. Although intuitive, placing your furniture against the wall is not only unoriginal but also makes your space look too small. Additionally, this design limits functionality in the space and makes it less inviting. The best way to resolve this is by taking the “floating furniture” approach. With this strategy, furniture is pulled away from the walls and forward into each other to create a more inviting and intimate ambiance.
- Misplacing your television
Another important design aspect of your living room is your television and where it goes in your living room. The placement of your television plays a vital role in how comfortable your living room space is. How so? Assuming your TV is placed a bit higher than the average eye level. This would mean your guests would struggle and be uncomfortable viewing the screen. Likewise, placing it further from your guests’ sitting area can make it difficult for them to comfortably watch the screen. Therefore, you must consider several factors when purchasing and installing a TV for your living room. First, you must consider the type and size. For example, if you are going for a wide, curved TV, you should consider making it the focal point of your living room. You should also consider the practical placement of your TV. To ensure you do so accurately, avoid doing it yourself. Instead, hire a professional TV hanging service to ensure your TV is well installed.
- Choosing price over quality
You cannot overlook the prices of items when purchasing elements for your living room. However, focusing more on the price instead of the quality is a big no-no. Many homes spend a grand amount of money purchasing various expensive decor and design pieces for their living rooms to give a sense of lavishness and elegance. On the other hand, in an effort to be on a budget, other homes purchase cheap products. Despite these efforts, the quality of the items is rarely ever considered. This would mean that you may be designing and decorating your living room with low-quality pieces that cannot handle everyday wear and tear pressures, causing it to be less functional and difficult to maintain. Therefore, you should invest in high-quality products instead.
- Creating a monotone palette
Your color theme is another important factor to consider when designing your home. When considering the colors, you usually settle for the colors that complement the style and ambiance of the entire home. An important element to consider when implementing color palettes is harmony. Harmony among the colors brings the room together, making it more inviting and unique. However, many homes get this wrong, resulting in the use of monotone palettes, lacking intriguing and striking colors to amuse visitors and create a statement. This makes your living room space dull and, in some cases, uninviting. You can avoid this by exploring colors. Going for colors that complement each other is always advisable to prevent chaos and distaste. Although you may not use it throughout the room, including these colors subtly in the living room space can go a long way to transforming it.
- Forgetting about lighting
The lighting in your living room is also important when trying to create an inviting atmosphere. Harsh lights in the living room can make it uncomfortable and reduce functionality. Additionally, little to no lights make the space difficult to use and increase the chances of trips, falls, and other accidents. Fortunately, you can resolve this by implementing the right lighting solutions. For example, setting up your living room to let more natural light into the space is a great idea. You should also include softer and warmer lights from lamps and dimmer bulbs to make the space more inviting.
