20 of the Most Stunning Small Living Room Ideas

Creating a comfortable living space is always one of the most important aspects of creating a home. You spend so much of your time in the living room, socializing, relaxing, watching television and just spending time with family. It can be hard enough to try to furnish and decorate an average or large sized living room, so small living rooms can be an even bigger challenge.

What type of furniture would look best, or even fit in your small space, and what types of décor pieces should you use to complete and compliment your furniture without making it look overcrowded? There are tips to creating the perfect living room for you and your family, including small living rooms. Having ideas before you embark on decorating your living room, can help you make better choices that you will be happy with and enjoy, every time you step foot in the room. Keep reading to see 20 of the most stunning small living room ideas.

There are multiple tips you can follow to help you make the best decisions for your small living area. Here are some simple rules and tips to follow to create the perfect living room if it is a small room with little floor and wall space.

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1. Choose a light color scheme

When spaces are small, dark colors quickly eat up the space and close in the room. Light colors keep the room open and airy and recede the space. Neutral tones mixed with light blues and greens are a good combination to naturally increase the space you have to work with. You can use bright, vibrant colors around the room in accent pieces, such as throw pillows and other decorative items.

2. Light colored furniture

Going with the same theme of the wall colors, light colored furniture adds space to the room as opposed to darker colored furniture. Dark colored woods on furniture can shrink a room and draw your vision inward rather than out. Light oak colored wood has less vision weight compared to dark woods. Furniture with legs also gives you more floor space visual and allows you to see more of the floor, adding more square footage to a room where as furniture that sits directly in the floor, eats up flooring and makes a room feel small and tight.

3. The use of mirrors

Mirrors provide a visual effect that can give the illusion of extra space. When mirrors are arranged to reflect certain things and areas of a room, they open up a room to create more light and the feeling of a bigger room. Mirrors can also have a negative effect and shrink a room if they reflect the wrong things, so placing them strategically is critical in order to get them to work for you.

4. Use your vertical lines

A room’s size isn’t just about the floor space and square footage, but the room’s height. Take advantage of and use your room’s vertical space to help create the illusion of more space. By adding tall objects and décor pieces, you can help to draw attention upward instead of out, to open the room. Ideas include the use of tall vases with tall or layered arrangements, tall paintings or stacked paintings, adding floor-length drapes, floor lamps and tall mirrors.

5. Scale your furniture to size

In a small room, large furniture does not make sense. Large furniture instantly takes up vital space and closes in a room, however it isn’t just about smaller pieces, it’s about choosing the right smaller pieces that will help increase your room’s size and feel. Examples of properly scaled furniture can include the use of a small bench for a coffee table, smaller sized couch, chairs without arms and clear tables. One mistake that can be made is overdo the placement of small furniture and cluttering the room with too many pieces.

6. Use multifunction furniture

To get the most use out of your room and furniture, choose pieces that can serve as a multiple function piece. Using an ottoman as a coffee table is a popular idea for small spaces. Many ottomans also offer storage space inside to help hold items that would clutter the floor. Use small bookshelves to hold baskets for storage as well as consoles with doors can be used to hide things for a tidier room.

7. Harmonize your room

Harmonizing is a way of saying to create an even visual flow through the room. You can harmonize with color schemes, and your furniture to draw the eyes from a large piece of furniture to the wall behind it by using a lighter shade of paint on the wall than the color of the sofa to draw the focus off the furniture and on to the space behind it.

8. Layer lighting

Lighting is a key factor in any room but even more important in a small room. The key to lighting is to layer it in the room, from floor to ceiling. The use of multiple types of lighting helps darken all areas of a room, which can close in a space and make it feel small. Multi-layering lighting entails the use of the natural light you have in your room paired with floor lamps, table lamps, ceiling lights, sconces on the walls and even artwork lights.

All types of lighting work together to brighten dark corners and light up spaces that feel closed in by darkness. Evening time is one of the most obvious times of day where a room can lose its sense of size and can be rectified with a generous amount of artificial lighting.

All of these factors are important when decorating a small living room, however, the most important of them is probably proper furniture sizing. When you have the right scaled furniture for your room, and the right pieces, you can dramatically change the look and feel of your small living room and create the illusion that it is a bigger room than the square footage actually indicates.

Knowing what to look for in home décor for small living rooms before you decorate, can help you set your room up so that you get the most out of the space you have.

Here are 20 of the most stunning living room ideas to help you decorate your small space.