How to make your living room look amazing

If there’s one room in your home that you never seem to be happy with, it’s the living room. While a kitchen revamp can be achieved with a new bread bin and perhaps a matching toaster, and while the hall or spare bedroom can be instantly transformed with a new light fixture and a travel map, the living room tends to pose much more of a design problem. 

You could try new wallpaper, or you could order some cheap canvas prints to give the place a personal touch, or maybe you could even play with scents and candles to try to bring out a more homely effect in the room that you spend most of your life in. However, colour schemes and cosmetic fix-ups might not do the trick. Instead, what you need is a living room revamp. And to achieve this, you need to consider one of three main routes forwards. Let’s look into it.

Move absolutely everything 

Sometimes, rooms become boring or dull just because we’re used to them. It’s the oldest apology in the book, “it’s not you, it’s me”. For that reason, you may wish to consider having a slight rethink on the layout and flow of your living room – and you can read ‘slight rethink’ as ‘total overhaul’. This sounds all too easy, but if you haven’t got two main things in place, the reasons for your living room feeling less than perfect could be solved relatively quickly. These things are: you need a focal point, and you need clear walkways between doors. 

If you have a fireplace and TV and a fish tank and a photo wall and a … yeah, your focal points may be too many. Likewise, if you’re dodging furniture to walk through the living room, find a way to clear the path. 

Wooden flooring

Carpets are out. They just are. Since the advent of cheap and realistic clip-together wooden flooring, carpet makes no sense. Historically, wooden floors cost a fortune and had to be sanded and refinished every so often (with considerations over leaving the floor to dry overnight), making them expensive and cumbersome to maintain.   

Those days are over. Get your floor space measured and look at the pricing. You may be pleasantly surprised with what you can achieve on a limited budget. 

Mirrors

Mirrors are the interior designer’s best friend. They add light. They add space. The frame offers colour and texture and room to express personal taste. If your living room does not feature a statement mirror, you could be missing out on an easy and fast revamp solution. Beware, however, that smaller mirrors can shrink rooms, by giving the effect of a porthole in a cramped cabin. For best results … go big!