HOME DECORATION AND FURNITURE

Your starting point when it comes to decorating living rooms is, as always, to determine exactly what you want from your living room as this will dictate how you will arrange the space. You want to write down all your living room design ideas to help you decide on its ultimate functionality. Is it to be:

• a leisure room for quiet reading, listening to music, letter writing, watching television?
• a dining room for family meals, smart parties, television suppers?
• an entertainment room for family parties, video viewing, card games?
• a hobbies room for dressmaking, model making, arranging a stamp collection and so on?
• a work room for study, word processing, homework, research?
• a mix of all or any of the above?

These various activities all require specialized lighting, ample storage facilities and suitable modern living room furniture. By listing them on your living room design plan you will help to focus your mind on what is needed.

When it comes to planning a modern living room furniture arrangement, it is important to establish a focal point in your living room – a point of interest that can be highlighted and around which furnishings can be gathered. In a truly workable living room design the most obvious focal point is a fireplace, but if one does not exist another point of interest will need to be selected: perhaps the room has a handsome window with an attractive view beyond, an important piece of furniture, a collection of paintings or even an antique rug.

In a very large or ‘double’ living room you can have several subsidiary focal points around which you will arrange ‘conversation’ groupings. These days the television set will also have a vast effect on how the room is arranged and how you structure your new living room design ideas.

Selecting a style for your living room design should be an easy matter if you live in a period property as the theme may well be suggested by the style of architecture. In a more anonymous modem space you have the choice of imposing a traditional style by the addition of architectural details and furnishings of your selected period or of interpreting a contemporary and perhaps foreign idiom. Your living room design may be inspired by an existing possession – the design of an oriental rug, the style of a distinguished piece of modern living room furniture or even the colors in a favorite large painting.