Interior designers will have ideas of their own about your space, but if you were to hire a professional, they would try to include your family’s personality into the space. While designer living rooms are for those that want to impress, there are some families that have a difficult time separating the multiple functions a living room needs to perform. If you have a formal living room, along with an additional family room, it’s easier to leave the living room space for entertaining and formal occasions.
“Intended use” is one of the first things an interior designer will ask and that is a question you should answer for yourself. Is it going to be used on a daily basis, for recreation or only for welcoming guests and entertaining? If you have children, it might be a different answer than what a couple with no children will decide. These factors can determine the direction your personalised living room design should head toward.
The next question to answer is what your focal point will be. If your living room doesn’t have one, you may need to create one. If you have a large picture window, you will need to work towards highlighting it as a feature – perhaps by choosing beautiful made to measure pencil pleat curtains, but if you have a 48″ flat screen television, it is more obvious what the focal point will likely be. Accentuating the focal point is done through grouping your furnishings towards it or around it.
The next step is to figure out what the best paint colour will be. Popular colours are browns for warmth or blues for cooler appearance. This can depend on your environment, but it can distinguish whether you envision warm and cosy or cool and comfortable for your space. Some people choose browns for wall colours and blues for highlighting because this combination has become quite popular. You can move out of traditional ways of thinking because wall colours can set your mood. If you paint a single wall in bright orange, or have hot pink curtains it will affect your mood when you see it!
The choice of flooring can be a practical one because you don’t want to be replacing carpet or hardwood flooring very often. Using plenty of thought is important because paint is much easier to change, if you don’t like it. If you are looking for easy-to-clean flooring, hardwood floors might be better, but you may need a large area designer rug to add warmth to the floor and to the room. Carpet should withstand everything you plan to do in the room.
