Interior designers warn that four common living room features can make a home look cheap and tacky: matching furniture sets, undersized rugs, an excess of small furniture pieces, and curtains hung at the wrong length. According to design experts, these choices can leave a space appearing dated and cluttered, even if each individual item is attractive on its own.
The living room is among the most frequently used areas in any home, meaning it can quickly become overwhelmed with furniture and decorative pieces over time. Interior designers and décor specialists suggest the key is to craft a space that feels thoughtful and individual, rather than one that appears as though everything was purchased in a single shopping trip.
Why Matching Furniture Sets Fail
A perfectly coordinated sofa, armchair, coffee table, and side table might seem like the simplest route to a well-put-together living room, but designers warn that purchasing everything as a set can leave the space feeling flat and devoid of character. Guillaume Drew, founder of Or & Zon, told Martha Stewart that matching furniture sets are amongst the quickest ways to make a living room look tacky, particularly when every piece shares an identical aesthetic. Rather than investing in an entire collection, designers advise mixing individual pieces that work well together.
The Impact of Rug Size and Furniture Quantity
A rug may seem like a minor detail, but selecting the wrong size can entirely alter the appearance of your living room. Kate Fuller, an interior designer boasting more than 300,000 Instagram followers, warns that an undersized rug can leave furniture looking disconnected. Ideally, the rug should tie the principal pieces of furniture together. When your sofa, armchair and coffee table are all gathered around a tiny rug, the individual pieces can appear to float independently rather than forming a cohesive seating area.
It can be tempting to fill every vacant corner of a living room with an extra chair, a side table, a footstool or a small cabinet. However, more furniture does not necessarily make a room feel more complete. The Spruce points out that the scale of furniture is just as crucial as the quantity in any given room. A space can therefore appear more costly and well-considered with fewer, better-proportioned pieces. This is especially significant in smaller living rooms, where cramming too much furniture into the available floor space can leave the room feeling claustrophobic.
Curtain Length and Window Proportions
The Spruce notes that poorly chosen curtain lengths are a common decorating blunder. Curtains may not be the first thing that springs to mind when you're trying to make your living room look upmarket, but getting them wrong can have a surprisingly significant impact. Curtains that fall too short can make the windows, and consequently the entire room, appear awkwardly out of proportion. When they finish noticeably above floor level, they can leave a room appearing incomplete, while poorly positioned curtain poles may also impact how spacious the windows seem. Mounting curtains higher and wider than the actual window frame can help create the illusion of a larger window and lend the room a more polished appearance.
