Living Room Archives - Home and Garden Solutions

Try these ideas to make a cramped living room feel larger, but still cosy. Remove everything from flat surfaces.Rearrange the furniture and move items around your house.Use pictures and photos.Add a mirror or update an existing mirror.Arrange hanging plants or use tall narrow pots.Change your cushions.Add rugs and throws. Use paint to change the shape of the room. Hide the TV.Improve your lighting. Remove Everything From Flat Surfaces When you have used a living room for a while, it's easy for every flat surface to end up with clutter and ornaments. Let the room take a breath by clearing every surface. Whilst you're at it, give the surfaces themselves some attention. A damp dust or some polish will have them looking better in no time. Now add back just some of those items that you really love. Try giving away or selling any items that you don't like or are tired of. Put the rest of the items in a cupboard for another day when you feel like a change. Glass and metal ornaments will tend to make a room lighter whilst wooden objects will make a room feel more cosy. Mix and match until you get the look you prefer. Rearrange The Furniture This is my personal favourite. When I was at home with small children, moving the furniture around gave a different look without costing anything (and was good exercise too!) Moving large furniture, such as sofas and armchairs, away from the walls can improve how you use the room, making a long room feel less like a corridor. Move Items Around Your House Many items of furniture and home décor items are not really specific to any room e.g. chests of drawers and cupboards. Think outside the box - even a wardrobe can work as brilliant storage in a living room. They are tall, making use of a lot of wasted space near the ceiling and normally not too deep. Any piece of furniture that doubles as storage is extra useful in a small room. You can turn low cupboards into seating by placing cushions on top. Large pieces of furniture can be a bit overwhelming without careful placing, so try experimenting. Your room might feel much bigger with a sofa and just one arm chair with a footstool providing extra temporary seating. Or an L shaped sofa can provide flexible seating without taking up so much floor space. Add Pictures And Photos Lots of pictures or photos scattered around a room can make it feel cluttered. Try grouping pictures in matched or random frames, They will look better if you mix portrait and landscape frames as this adds visual interest. Clever positioning of shelves to display art can make a room feel larger. Arrange them to add height without adding too much width. Add A Mirror Or Update An Existing Mirror Everyone knows that mirrors make a room look larger and lighter. However, an old-fashioned mirror can make a room look outdated and cluttered. It's a fairly easy DIY job to remove an ugly frame and replace it with one made from bought mouldings. Alternatively, use paint on a frame to give an existing mirror a new lease of life. Don't feel you have to stick to a flat colour. Instead, you can let your creativity loose with a second colour dry-brushed over a base colour. Add Hanging Plants Or Choose Narrow Tall Pots Adding height with plants can make your room feel larger. Take care not to clutter the room with lots of pots. A few strategically placed plants or vases of fresh flowers will bring the outside in. They will also freshen the air. Change Your Cushions Cushions are an easy DIY sewing project and don't use too much fabric. Look around the house to see if you have an fabric that you can repurpose. Try using old jeans, coats and throws or blankets. You can repurpose an old jumper as a cushion cover: Turn your jumper inside out and lay it over the cushion pad to ensure that it is big enough. Place the cushion pad centred correctly inside the jumper. Pin and sew across the arm-holes and below the neckline. Either cut off the sleeves or leave them inside if they are not too bulky.Remove the pad and turn the jumper back the right way.Replace the pad and sew across the bottom of the jumper by hand. If you use a cardigan, you can sew across the bottom of the jumper whilst it is inside out. Then open the zip or unbutton to turn it round the right way. Soft furnishings, like cushion covers, are a good way to update a room. They are fairly inexpensive. However, it is wasteful to just throw them away because you are bored. Either put them away for a season or try the following: Try a swap with friends and family.Consider dyeing them a different colour using a washing machine.Add ribbons, buttons, tassels or applique Add A Rug A well-placed rug can pull the eyes to the entre of the room. This creates the optical illusion that the walls are further away. On a dark floor, a bright rug can bring cheer to the room. Clever colour-matching to other soft furnishings can bring cohesion to a room. This makes it seem more cosy without making it feel too small. Use A Throw Or Blanket To Transform A Sofa Or Chair Fleece throws are so cheap to buy now that they are almost treated as a throw-away item. This is a shame because they are so versatile. Don't forget that the same throws can be used in a bedroom as easily as in a living room. Gradually buying a few throws in colours that you like can easily change the look of a room. Move them round the house and put them away in the summer or use them to fill cushion covers. Change The Paint This sounds so obvious, but you don't have to change every wall. Try painting just one wall in a contrasting or toning colour. Try painting a stripe around the room or mask off a section of one wall to add interest. It really is amazing how one darker or brighter wall can totally alter the shape of a room. At home, we were bored with our cream walls. We decided we would paint the wall opposite the window a deep red. We found that our rather rectangular room felt so much better proportioned. This was easily reversed when we were tired of the colour. Paint A Dominant Fireplace A dark wood or brick fireplace can really dominate a room. It's surprising how just painting them a lighter colour can make them much less obtrusive. It's now so much easier to get paint mixed just to the colour you want. Try painting your fireplace the same colour as a wall. The same can be said of an old coffee table or nest of tables. Paint it to match the wall or floor and see how it makes the room feel bigger. Hide The TV Thankfully, gone are the days of deep TVs that need huge stands. Wall-mounting your TV is a job that many competent DIYers will fee confident in tackling. Ensure you use the correct fixings and follow the instructions carefully. There are a few options for hiding the wires: Channel out the wall. Surface-mount some trunking, colour-matched to the wall. Or with a cunningly placed piece of furniture. Placing a TV in a corner or on a shorter wall can make it much less noticeable. This will make your room feel larger. Experiment with different placements. Bear in mind that you will need access to sockets. Improve Your Lighting It's well-known that lighting can make a room seem more cosy. It is also possible to make a room feel bigger with lighting. Dark corners make a room feel smaller, so try to angle lights into every corner. Use either ceiling lights, wall lights or carefully positioned table lamps. Try to avoid using one large low-hanging central ceiling light since it will be overpowering for a small room. Consider using hidden lighting under shelves to help with avoiding dark corners. Strip LEDs are particularly useful for this and can provide extra interest with changing colours. It's also possible to put strip lights behind wall-mounted TVs. Try to increase the natural light coming into a room .Use mirrors and items with reflective surfaces such as glass-topped tables. Making your room feel larger Try some of the ideas above. You will be surprised at how much bigger your small living room will feel and you won't need to have spent much money to achieve it.