Living Room Ideas

A living room at noon and the same living room at nine in the evening are, in effect, two different rooms. At noon it needs daylight, clarity, and enough brightness to feel open and welcoming. In the evening it needs warmth, softness, and light that flatters people rather than exposing them. A single lighting setup … Read more

You do not need a spare room, a window seat, or a library to have a reading corner. You need a chair you like sitting in, light you can read by, somewhere to put a drink and a book, and a corner of your living room that is quiet enough to settle into. Most living … Read more

A family-friendly living room has a reputation problem. Mention it and most people picture a room given over entirely to children: plastic toys everywhere, a sofa covered in throws to hide the stains, and no trace of the adults who also live there. But a genuinely family-friendly room is not a playroom with a sofa … Read more

A small living room asks one question more urgently than a large one: how do you fit enough seating and enough storage into a room that barely has space for either? Most small-room advice treats these as separate problems — buy a smaller sofa, add a bookshelf — but in a small living room they … Read more

The sofa is usually the largest, most expensive, and longest-lasting item in a living room, and it is often bought before the rest of the room is planned. That leaves many people with the same question: now that I have this sofa, what colours go with it? A grey sofa, a brown sofa, a blue … Read more

Almost every living room has a television, and almost every living room owner has the same dilemma: the television needs to be watchable, but nobody wants a room that looks like it exists only for a screen. Arrange the furniture purely for viewing and the room feels like a cinema with sofas. Arrange it purely … Read more

A cosy living room is not a style you buy. It is a feeling a room gives you when you walk in on a cold evening: somewhere soft to sit, warm light instead of harsh light, something warm underfoot, and the sense that the room is inviting you to stay a while. Some rooms achieve … Read more

Some living rooms are easy to arrange: four roughly equal walls, a window in a sensible place, and a clear spot for the sofa. Then there are the others — the long, narrow room that feels like a corridor, the L-shaped room with a corner nobody knows what to do with, the room with doors … Read more