Liven up your living room for less

Posted: 22 July 2010 by Metricon Homes

Tags: colours, design, furniture

Living rooms tend to be a very popular space in the home and a place where the family congregates and relaxes. Because the room is so well, lived in, the furniture takes a serious beating and the decorative elements get stale fairly quickly. Use the following tips to give your living room a fresh new look for not a lot of money.

Shop your Home
Scour your own home, from storage areas to other rooms to see if there are any pieces that can be swapped out for something in your living room. You can even take old furniture and find a throw rug to liven it up or, depending on your budget, have it reupholstered to give it new life.

Focus on One Piece
Turn one decorative piece or large piece of furniture into the focal point and decorate around it. One high quality piece will carry the room in most cases and allow you to decorate lightly around it. Be careful not to over decorate as too many pieces of furniture will make the room look crowded and unappealing.

Look outside the norm
Rather than buying all expensive pieces that always match, look for eclectic pieces from all over with a unifying theme, colour, style or just pieces that particularly appeal to you. A popular trend is cushions that don’t precisely match the rest of the couch. Keep your basic couch, but have some slipcovers custom made for the cushions and replace them. You can always go back to your original covers in the future. Look for something vibrant and exciting and use a different type of fabric.

Go Bold and Colourful
If you’ve already got a pretty monochromatic colour scheme, go the other way. Add a few unexpected splashes of colour. Step away from the standard accessories for colour and add a chair or area rug that is full of colour and brings a new sense of energy to the room.

Rearrange the Furniture
Just a simple change of your furniture arrangement can really give the room a new look. If you’re able to change the traffic flow of the room you’ll give it an even different feel. If you have more than one focal point in the room, switch the focus from your old focal point to another.

Change the Focal Point
Your living room should be arranged around a focal point, so by changing the way your main feature appears you’ll create a big difference in the room. Purchase a new entertainment center for your television. Retile a fireplace or replace the mantle. If a window is your focal point, change the window treatment.

To give your living room a new look and a different feel, try to step out of the room and see it in a different way, push furniture to the sides of the room if it will help you picture it in a different way. Living room redecorating projects don’t need to be expensive and they don’t even require replacing all of your existing pieces. The above living room decorating tricks are a great way to create a fresh, new environment for your family to gather together in and relax.