Decorating Your Living Room: 10 Things You Need to Avoid

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As your living room furniture starts to show wear and tear, your first inclination may be to go to a furniture store and purchase whatever is on sale. This can be a bad choice when you want to decorate living room that is functional, beautiful and comfortable. Here are some tips to help you with your decorating skills.

Don’t Paint Too Soon

This is the most common decorating mistake when you are designing a living room. You should focus on the furnishings first and then paint your living room. It is much easier to find paint colors to match your living room furnishings than vice versa.

Choosing Uncomfortable Furnishings

When you enter a furniture showroom, you will tend to gravitate to what living room scenario looks the best to you. If you realize that the beautiful chair or sofa is not the most comfortable, but choose it anyway, you may be stuck with uncomfortable furniture for the next 10 years that doesn’t wear well. Make certain to sit on all of the furniture to see if it is super comfortable and something you want to take home. Furniture seats that are higher off the ground will generally be thicker. This is ideal for a chair or sofa that will be in use frequently in your home. The seats shouldn’t compress a lot when you sit on them or the furniture will wear out quickly and become uncomfortable in a short amount of time.

Neglecting to Accessorize

If you have built up clutter, it doesn’t count as décor. You can add accessories to bookshelves or coffee tables to give your home a certain flair that reflects your style. Use all of your horizontal spaces and your vertical spaces such as your walls for accessorizing your living room, but don’t cover all the surfaces completely, or it will appear like clutter.

Not Removing Anything

When you get a new piece or accessory for your living room, take an old item out. No one really needs 30 decorative pillows on a couch or two lamps on an end table. If something doesn’t work anymore or it goes unused, you can donate it or sell it. Keep on top of this note to keep your living room in the best shape without overdoing it.

Settling for Anything

When you want to purchase a new rug, vase or chair, don’t just drive to the closest store possible and choose whatever is handy and maybe on sale. Think about keeping the item for over five years and how you’ll feel about it over the course of time. Sometimes the best things are worth waiting for. If you’re in doubt of an item, just don’t get it.

Not Considering Scale

This is a big don’t in the decorating world. If your furniture is too big or your artwork is too small, it puts your entire room out of scale. Smaller area rugs are much more affordable than larger ones, but a tiny rug in the center of a large room just doesn’t look right. Decorating living room to your taste and don’t always base it on a showroom. Showrooms normally create many small “living rooms” in a larger space and are not to scale as a real living room.

Pushing All Furniture against the Walls

Many homeowners push all the furniture in the living room against the walls in an attempt to have more open space in the middle of the room for it to look larger. In fact, a professional home decorator will tell you that this technique actually makes a small living room appear even smaller. Using your furniture to create living spaces instead of one large space can help it look newer, upbeat and keep people from shouting across the room to be heard on the other side.

Creating a Television Shrine

Your living room is used for so much more than just watching television. So, all of the furniture doesn’t have to face the television, rather make conversational areas with your furnishings and accessories to celebrate having family activities or conversations for a true, blue living space that can be used by family and friends.

Not Considering a Growing Family

Sleek designer couches with no arms and straight lines may appear great in a furniture showroom. You may also love the look of light-colored wool shag rugs often used in showrooms. But, if you have kids or pets already or are expecting to add them to your family, this may not be wear-friendly furniture for either pets or kids. Choose more durable fabrics and rugs for a lively family with kids or pets.

Not Ignoring Wear and Tear

Things that change slightly over time are not really noticed because you use your living room furniture on a daily basis. So, you may not realize there are bumps and lumps on the seats of your furniture or scratches on the wooden legs of an end table. If you do an evaluation about once a year these items won’t crop up on you and go unnoticed. You may decide to reupholster furniture, paint walls or dress up your floors before it becomes evident that they look worn to your friends and family. Following these tips on what to avoid when decorating your living room can help you to have a fresh, inviting space in your home at all times.