Decorating a Small Living Room

Decorating a Small Living Room

A living room is the most essential part of a household. It depicts the personalities of the people staying in the house as well as their tastes for life. From colors, textures and accessories that one adds up in their living room can either make a small living room look stunning or damp like the monsoons.

Do you ever remember stepping into a room with grey cushions, larger couch, dusky table and the ever dimming lamp? Well this living room seems to have space for all the furniture, but not more than ten people can stand and breathe in this mounted area. Let me help you out with some pocket saver tips.

Soft and Light Hues
Walls are the key feature for making a room look smooth and happening. A small living room can look larger, if you try painting the walls or even ceilings with "cool" colors like green or blue. Make sure the shades are darker as they appeal to wholeness of the entire room. These colors have the ability to make your ceilings look larger in height.

Working with Window Treatments
For instance, if you have window treatments, you can give them an impression of extra height to the room. To give this effect, let your window treatments move up towards the ceiling. Looks great! Trust Me.

Use Of Over Scaled Objects
Over scaled objects could be categorized into screens, large paintings, picture frames and patterns. These objects definitely behold the charm of making a room look larger and appeal a larger space to your living room.

Keep What You Need
Make sure you do not stack up your living room with souvenirs. The more you leave space, the more your living room will show freedom and clarity. Leaving space does not mean you empty the whole living room keeping nothing at all. Large leather couches are out of fashion and slender yet portable furniture will not only give you space to move about in your living room, but also add a crisp feeling of comfort and modern outlook.

Flowing Curtains
Curtains need to be long and light in colors. White curtains sound like a little hard to maintain, but they add a charismatic effect on your living room. The basic benefit of white curtains is that they permit the natural light to enter your room and add a smooth and cooling effect to your living room. The more your living room has natural light and air flowing in, the less your room will smell of sweat. Heavy drapes are a big NO NO!

Color Coordination
The most important tip one must keep in mind while decorating their living room is to coordinate the color of your furniture with the hues on your walls. You need to add a little creative effort decide what will look good with which color. For example, the lighter hues of green go very well with white. This turns out to be a bright and soothing combination.

Magical Reflective Surfaces
Reflective surfaces work miracles in making a small living room grow into a larger space. If in case you have a large plain wall, you can very well add up a large mirror with some artificial light effects. This will give the most rich and spacious layout for your living room.

Lighter the Fabrics, Larger the Room
Since ages, lighter fabrics are labeled for the rich and the famous. But with a little effort, one can afford them too. Lighter fabrics have the power to make your room look larger in size but at the same time, a lot more clean and crisp. Who doesn't want a clean room anyways?

Tameka Norris runs Furniture for Small Spaces. It offers nifty tips and tactics, a Q & A section for people in need of answers, photos of her own small space trials, projects for the DIYer and recommendations on furniture choices.

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Armchairs for Small Spaces

Armchairs for Small Spaces

Planning out your space is absolutely crucial when you are living in a small space. For safety you need to allocate a safe space between articles of furniture. In the case of between chairs and the sofa, a space of between 2 to 3 feet should be adequate to prevent hitting the exterior against the furniture every time you move. You also need to have a minimum of 2 foot between the front of your chair or sofa and your coffee table to allow you sufficient room when you stand up. You don't really want to overbalance and keel over across the coffee table if you lose your balance!

Measurements of Armchairs for Small Spaces

When choosing armchairs for small spaces you need to ensure the size of those armchairs don't dominate the overall proportions of the room they are intended for. It's not just the size either, but the style that you need to be careful of. When choosing armchairs for small spaces, ensure you choose armchairs with thin arms, freestanding legs rather than legs that are hidden by flaps of upholstery. And when it is a choice between curves and straight lines, forget about the curves - when you want to fit armchairs for small spaces, always go for clean straight lines. You may even consider choosing armchairs with no arms at all - that is bound to save you some space, albeit not a great deal but it will also trick the eye into believing there's more than there is.

The size of a chair needs to be taken into consideration when you don't have a great deal of room to manoeuvre. When you are considering armchairs for small spaces you might consider a smaller version of a standard chair. This should be between 24 inches and 32 inches wide - usually ample room to allow somebody to be seated comfortably. Never leave sizing to chance, hoping that it will slot into that rather neat little place you have planned for it. You need to be ruthless with measurements - make sure you measure the space you have and the furniture you want to fill it with.

You also need to ensure that you measure the outer dimensions of a piece of furniture - when you are limited for space, it is the outer dimensions that are going to be the important ones. It is as well to remember that whatever the outer measurements of your armchair are, the interior measurements are going to be smaller - so make sure you will have enough room to actually be comfortable when sitting in the armchair.

Inspired by the Designs

If you trawl through the enormous array of different styles that the various manufacturers, you may notice that most armchairs seem to lack in originality. The problem with many designers is they seem to forget people have to sit in the chairs and it's the act of sitting that inspires the design of the chair... not the other way around. Furthermore, the armchair is designed to be sat in with comfort in mind: where backs, buttocks and arms should be supported ergonomically to take the pressure off the muscles across the shoulders and lower neck.

Many of the armchairs don't do that and many have seats at the wrong angle. Making it completely uncomfortable to sit in. However, a few manufacturers seem to take comfort, style and size into consideration. And from these few, it's possible to choose some that are not only suitable sized armchairs for small spaces but ones that evince plenty of real style as well.

Tameka Norris offers space saving tips and small scale furniture recommendations for small rooms, homes, apartments, dorms, and small condos at her website Furniture-for-Small-Spaces.com.