Design: Hommes Studio
It’s not difficult to achieve a spotless living room layout. When you take into account essential and easy to follow interior design tips, a clean and clutter-free interior is possible. Don’t underestimate basic guidelines, as they are the key to successfully creating a beautiful living room. Interior design is about finding the balance between function and aesthetics. Here are a few simple techniques from design professionals to help you get started:
1. Work around a focal point
Think about the visual outcome that you would like to achieve. What would be the focal element in your living room? Is it the large window with a beautiful garden view, a contemporary artwork on the wall, or a dramatic suspension lamp? Once you have decided your point of focus, you can now coordinate your furniture and other furnishing elements to draw the eyes to your element of choice.
Design: Design Tone Interior Practice
2. Create cosy nooks
It’s always nice to have an intimate conversational area within a room – it can be a quiet corner in the living room, family room, and even in the bedroom. While socialising with others is important, many of us also require privacy. Fortunately, intimate nooks are easy to pull off by positioning the sofas and chairs to face each other. If it is a spacious room and you want to create a larger chillax spot for more than one person, consider an elevated platform with plenty of pillows.
Design: Armarior Sdn Bhd
3. Avoid pushing furniture to the wall
Room measurements will dictate how far you can pull your furniture away from the walls, but even in a small living room, you’ll want to give your furniture pieces a little breathing room by allowing a few inches between the backs of furniture pieces and the walls. Despite popular belief, this little bit of space can actually make rooms feel bigger.
Design: Rekaphosis Interior Sdn Bhd
4. Achieve balance and proportion
Balance is everything. When decorating, it’s essential to find a balance between vibrant and muted colours, between zingy patterns and clean visual textures, between streamlined and organic shapes and juxtaposed fabrics. As a result, the same principle is applied to size and dimension. When it comes to furniture placement, consider the size of the furniture piece and look for arranging areas with mixed dimensions. For instance, a large sofa can be balanced by two smaller ones – you can use two chairs or two side tables.
Design: GI Design
5. Use right-sized rugs
Area rugs belong under the furniture – however, you can break this rule without compromising the aesthetics of your living room layout. Use a big enough rug so that all the seating furniture can rest on it or, at least, the front legs of large pieces are sitting on the rug while the back legs lay on the bare floor.
Design: Gamuda Land Sdn Bhd
6. Use right-sized artwork
Like rugs, paintings, or any types of art pieces should be in an appropriate size. In addition, elements that you hang on the wall, such as artwork, mirrors, or sculptural objects, need to be placed strategically. Don’t hang a tiny photo over the back of a large sofa. Instead, use either a large piece that is approximately two-thirds the length of the couch or a group of art pieces for a dramatic effect.
Photo: Bimago
7. Ensure optimal lighting
Lighting is one of the most important elements of any room. Ideally, every room must be filled with natural light. It will bring out the colour of the interior and the perception of the space and objects. Furthermore, well-appointed lighting (both natural and artificial) are essential to create a flawless living room layout. A rule of thumb is to place lighting at different levels to achieve balance. Therefore, use various light sources like overhead fixtures for ambient light complemented by sconces or floor lamps for accent lighting, and table lamps are for task lighting.
Design: Metrics Global
