Is your living room feeling a little outdated? A common starting point for those looking to beautify their house somewhat is the living room. A place where you’ll likely spend a lot of your time relaxing or entertaining friends makes sense to be your first step towards updating your décor and refreshing the layout of your home.
There are plenty of things to consider when starting your living room renovation, and to help you with this, we’ve put together this useful, in-depth guide to give you inspiration and a bit of direction on how to get started.
Make A Plan
As with any large-scale project when getting your home renovation ready, you should create a detailed and meticulous plan before you get started. This should include everything you decide for your living room, including all of the things we’ll be discussing in this article. You should determine timeframes, what materials you need to purchase, what help you’ll need, and what order to do everything in.
The order is especially important as certain tasks are going to be much harder to complete if you do them before or after certain other tasks. For example, replacing electrics and sockets will be more of a challenge if you’ve already painted and filled your walls. You’ll have to be extra careful not to damage the new paintwork; otherwise, you’ll have to go over things again, adding an extra task to the project.
Decide On A Theme
Having a specific theme decided on for your living room is very important as you’ll want to avoid buying décor and furniture that don’t complement each other. For example, if you were to have opted for a cosy cottage theme with rustic wooden beams, warm rugs and comfy armchairs, a modern, glass coffee table might not match.
Be certain about your living room’s theme before you start purchasing things. Spend plenty of time making sure things go together well and that they also match your chosen colour scheme.
Read: 5 IDEAL ways to bring country chic to your home, wherever you are
Set A Budget
As part of the planning stage, you’ll also want to have decided upon a project budget. As many decorators will tell you, it is incredibly easy to overshoot your budget, and so there are two essential things to consider.
Firstly, you should do everything you can to stick to your agreed budget, as this will prevent you from having to dip into other savings that could be problematic for you in other areas of your life. Secondly, you should try to overestimate your budget as much as you can and aim to pay much less. This will give you plenty of wiggle room should other things need to be purchased and account for fluctuating material prices.
Change Your Floors
Changing your floor is a popular decision when decorating, as this can significantly change the look and feel of a room. Wooden flooring can look sleek yet rustic, whereas carpets can feel comforting and cosy. Both hard and soft floors work well for a living room, and it entirely depends on your personal preference as to which option you choose. However, you should remember a few pros and cons of both to help you decide.
Carpets are notoriously harder to clean than hardwood floors, whereas hard floors are often thought of as being slightly less welcoming than a carpet. Of course, you can negate a lot of these problems by choosing easy-to-clean carpet materials like nylon or polyester. And to make a hard floor feel a bit more comforting, you could choose to implement underfloor heating or add a nice luxurious rug.
Replace Windows & Doors
Another thing to think about replacing is your doors and windows. If you don’t have an open plan living area, you might want to remove the need for doors entirely by opening the place up if the remaining walls can withstand the added strain and you aren’t removing any load-bearing walls. If your living room has patio doors and windows, you should double-check to see if they are insulated properly.
If you need to replace them due to them letting out too much heat during the winter, spend some time researching the best options for this, as well as which companies to consider replacing them via this double glazing guide. Having insulated doors and windows is very important as it helps you to keep your home warmer for longer and reduces the required energy consumption from your central heating.
Add A Lick Of Paint
One of the more important things to consider when redecorating and renovating your living room area is choosing a fresh coat of paint for your walls. Refreshing your walls will provide them with a much cleaner appearance, even if you opt for a similar colour, such as reapplying a similar white or cream colour to the walls.
Alternatively, you could choose a colour that entirely changes the appearance of your room, like a bold and bright colour on all of your walls or a single accent wall. You could also consider going for a two-toned look, with a subtle colour on one half of the wall and an impactful one on the opposite half. You could, for instance, choose a dark grey or green for the bottom half of your walls and a muted white for the upper half, separating them via a rail or wall panels.
Implement A Focal Point
Every living room needs some sort of focus, and you need to decide what this will be so that you can draw everyone’s attention to it. Many living rooms will use a TV as the focal point, acting as a central entertainment hub for those relaxing in the room. This is perfect for those who are cinephiles and often have guests over to watch TV and movies. You could then arrange your furniture around your TV, whether it’s on the wall or freestanding on a cabinet.
Create a semi-circle formation around the television so that everyone will be able to watch comfortably, no matter where they choose to sit.
If you generally invite friends over to socialise or play party games, switching the focal point to a more centralised position in the room might be a good idea. A large, exquisite coffee table can be a great choice to use as a focal point in this case, adding a luxury appeal to your living room without the necessity for massive investment.
Make Use Of Lighting
One factor that can often slip under the radar is lighting. While people are so busy focusing on painting their walls, putting down new flooring, and buying new furniture, they can easily forget about this very important aspect of decorating.
How you set up your lighting can significantly change your room’s appearance, which can be either positive or negative. If you set up your lighting poorly, you could easily make the room look too gloomy or unwelcoming. In contrast, you can make an oppressively dark room feel vibrant and energising with the right lighting or make it cosy and comforting.
There is plenty of guidance on how to light a living room, including the different types of lighting you can use in your living room, from accent to ambient lighting. You could also benefit from implementing smart lighting into your living room, allowing you to control your light from your smartphone wherever you are for added convenience.
Should you be looking for a slightly less all-encompassing project, then check out our guide on upgrading your living room mainstays. You won’t regret it!