Living rooms are among the most frequently used areas in any home, so they can quickly become cluttered with furniture and décor. However, according to interior designers, certain decisions can leave a room appearing cheap and dated. From overly coordinated furniture to wrongly sized décor, minor adjustments can have a surprisingly significant impact.
Interior designers and décor specialists suggest the key lies in crafting a space that feels thoughtful and individual, rather than one that appears to have been purchased all at once. If your living room feels slightly off and you're keen to freshen it up, there are six areas worth addressing.
Matching Furniture Sets
A perfectly coordinated sofa, armchair, coffee table and side table might appear to be the simplest route to a well-organised 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 the same aesthetic.
Rather than investing in an entire collection, designers advise mixing and matching individual pieces that work well together.
A Rug That Is Too Small
A rug may seem like a minor detail, but choosing the wrong size can completely alter the look of your living room. Kate Fuller, an interior designer with over 300,000 Instagram followers, explained that a small rug can make furniture appear disconnected. In an ideal scenario, the rug should serve to unite the principal pieces of furniture.
When your sofa, armchair, and coffee table are all positioned around a tiny rug, the pieces can appear to float separately rather than create a cohesive seating area. It's important to avoid using small rugs.
Too Many Small Pieces of Furniture
It can be enticing to fill every vacant corner of a living room with another chair, a side table, a footstool or a small cabinet. However, additional furniture doesn't automatically mean the room appears more finished. The Spruce points out that furniture scale is equally as crucial as the quantity of furniture in a room. A room can therefore appear more luxurious and thoughtfully designed with fewer, better-proportioned pieces.
This is especially crucial in smaller living rooms, where attempting to fit too much furniture into the available floor space can make the room feel overcrowded.
Curtains That Are the Wrong Length
The Spruce highlighted that poorly selected curtain lengths are a frequent decorating error. Curtains might not be your initial consideration when trying to make your living room look expensive, but getting them wrong can have a significant impact.
Curtains that are too short can make the windows, and consequently the entire room, appear awkwardly proportioned. When they finish noticeably above the floor, they can leave a room looking incomplete, while poorly positioned curtain poles can also impact how large the windows appear. Hanging curtains higher and wider than the window can help to create the illusion of a larger window and give the room a more polished appearance.
