Living Room Designs & Ideas
The living room is a showroom for your design style. Decor comes together with color, texture, shape and design period, but unless you live in a museum, the room has to function for your entertaining and your family. So, sort your style but project how it will hold up under fire -- the hand-embroidered French brocade is an investment when the twins head off to college, an expensive and doomed indulgence one minute before that felicitous day.Contemporary Cool
Low-key is the key to contemporary decor, and keeping it spare means every item in the room should have a purpose and a great shape. A sectional or a plain sofa with simple lines, upholstered in oatmeal, chamois or light gray linen gets an Asian-inspired black lacquered coffee table and sits on a light sisal or berber rug or a bare ebony hardwood floor. Chairs are artifacts -- either one-off artist creations in rich materials or finely finished hardwood, or mixed examples of classic 20th-century designer seating. The fireplace is an opening in a freestanding or structural wall -- just a square or rectangle with no mantel or surround. The massive flat screen, sitting on a black-lacquered Shaker-style or benchlike table, is angled in a corner to face the sectional. Now you have room for a metal or plexiglass sculpture, a Rauschenberg-like combine mounted on one wall, or a series of black-and-white art photographs in unfussy wood or ebony frames.
White-on-White
Architectural detail is an invitation to a white-out -- remove all color to highlight ceiling beams, decorative moldings, a spectacular fireplace, majestic windows or French doors that open to a view. White is surprisingly forgiving -- just choose slipcovers you can toss in the wash, eggshell or satin finish wipe-off paint, and mix up your whites. Stick to warm whites or cool whites but not all blinding snow-white or a room as undefined as a cloud. White-painted or white tile floors might have a pale cream-bone-and-white abstract, striped or oriental area rug. Trim color, fireplace surround, drapes and cushions could be ivory, cream, bone, ash, ghost-gray or oatmeal. For absolute serenity, don't add any touches of color to an all-white retreat. Still in tranquil mode, layer in a few pale neutrals -- but just a few -- in wood furniture, accessories or carpet. Feature a single item in startling color when you want to highlight a painting, flower arrangement or a focal point -- an ethnic tapestry or a Murano glass chandelier.
Petite and Perfect
Your skinny living room looks less like the aisle of a bus when you arrange the furniture and the patterns to give it some heft. A boldly striped carpet in the conversation area breaks up the corridor impression and "floats" the furniture. A long, tailored sofa in a muted solid color against one wall provides plenty of seating but isn't the ornate elephant in the room. Balanced wall treatments -- a pier glass over the mantel opposite a similar-sized single painting over the sofa -- fool the eye into seeing width instead of "crunched." Keep the lines simple by painting walls, trim ceiling and architectural detail one light color and mounting drapes in a similar shade at the ceiling. Forget tchotchkes and clutter. An upholstered ottoman with open legs is an airy coffee table or extra seating. A chair angled toward the sofa at one end of the conversation area and a flat screen on a slender pedestal stand angled at the other end help to frame the space without closing it in.
Eclectic Style
When your tastes are catholic and your travels have yielded treasures to display, eclectic style suits your living room. But you need an organizing principle so the space doesn't look like a flea market. Pattern-on-pattern will help you pull things together. Paint the ceiling white and the walls a pale honey gold to feature oversized framed antique Chinese paintings and low, ornate chinoiserie cabinets. Pick up the creamy wall color in a variety of upholsteries and fabrics that also rely on the cinnabar or Chinese red in the art and furniture. A large Asian oriental carpet, ceiling-to-floor red-and-cream plaid curtains hung from bamboo and brass rods, overstuffed and antique and gilded sofas upholstered in pale, busy chintzes and embroidered Chinese silk are both elegant and unfussy -- they hide daily wear well. A graceful Ming side table and natural linen shades on floor lamps and wall sconces, and a profusion of fresh cut flowers and lucky bamboo plants in painted porcelain vases are warm and welcoming rather than chaotic and cluttered.
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