20 Gorgeous Living Rooms Incorporating Negative Space

Making the best use of your space in any room is important, especially rooms that are utilized as often as the living room. You want the room to be as functional as possible so that it’s comfortable and welcoming for both your family, and friends when they come for a visit. The living room is the most popular room in the house, so using as much space as leaving as little negative space unutilized in some manner, is the goal when your room, and its space leave you wondering what you are going to do with it. Being creative is the key to overcoming negative space and making it work in your living room, whether by visual appearances, or actual changes to the way you place furniture or situate a rug, or hang a piece of art. It can be done and you can learn how. Here are some tips to incorporate negative space in your living room.

Flooring

The flooring is one of the most visible elements of a room, and if you are limited in floor space, or it butts up against walls in odd angles that shorten your flooring square footage, you can help create the illusion of more floor square footage with a few tips. Keep the type of flooring congruent and flowing by sticking to one type of flooring, such as all wood flooring. Furniture that sits directly on the floor will instantly eat up floor square footage, which adds to the negative space. Instead, use furniture that has legs that allows the flooring to migrate and melt away under the furniture. Area rugs can be used on wood flooring to add to the appearance of more area than there really is, and give it depth as well as vastness.

Walls

Create a focal wall in the room to detract from an odd-shaped or oddly placed wall that is hard to work with in furniture placement. Paint the wall a bolder color than the others and hang a beautiful piece of artwork on the wall, a decorative clock, and consider a set of wall sconces to off-set the art deco on the wall. This helps to draw attention to the wall in a positive way as opposed to a negative way that without the design, it would stand out as an odd space. Wall shelves with pictures or art pieces can also showcase the wall and make it fit into the room with ease.

Arrange furniture creatively

Not all rooms are designed to set up furniture in a neat little package where everything fits neatly in its own special place. When negative space exists, you may have to get creative and arrange pieces in different ways, keeping in mind that foot flow is important. You won’t want your family or guests, having to shuffle around ill-fitting pieces of furniture to get in and out of the room. If need be, create two separate sitting areas in the room, or place a chair or two against a short wall where a sofa or table wouldn’t fit. A beautiful potted plant or small table between two chairs can be a quaint setting against a distant wall.

Use mirrors

If your room doesn’t appear large in certain areas, or have enough light to illuminate it, try using mirrors to reflect light and the openness of the rest of the room to enhance the area that seems left in the dark. Mirrors are a great way to visually increase the size and brightness of a room. Just be sure that nothing negative is in the reflection that could detour from the positive results you are trying to gain.

For more ideas on how to use your negative space, here are 2o gorgeous living rooms incorporating negative space to give you inspiration.