7 Top Living Room Design Ideas From This Week’s Stories

1. Keep compact spaces light and airy. If your living room’s walls have the potential of feeling as though they’re closing in on you, consider keeping their color neutral, the room’s decor sparse and most of the big pieces close to the same neutral color as the walls. This will lend a feeling of visual openness.

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2. Use a cabinet to delineate space in an open plan. Open layouts have a lot of benefits, but visually and physically you still want some sort of transition and separation between functions. Who wants to feel as though they’re dining in their living room? One simple trick is to use a cabinet at the back of a sofa to provide a bit of a buffer zone.

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3. Don’t be afraid to pack it in. Let the function of your living room dictate the layout and furnishings. Here, relaxing conversation among friends and family members is the name of the game, so various groups of comfortable seating point inward.

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4. Paint the background to camouflage the TV when it’s off. Who doesn’t like watching shows on a big screen right in the living room? But when the TV is off, some people find that the giant black rectangle creates a distracting eyesore that pulls down the rest of the decor. One trick is to paint the space behind the screen a dark color, so the TV blends in when it’s off.

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5. Paint the wall above a picture rail to accentuate tall ceilings. Tall ceilings can be a blessing and a curse. The extra breathing room is certainly nice, but sometimes the extra height can make a room feel cavernous. This owners of this home embraced a design move that pulls off a couple tricks. Thanks to a band of navy-blue paint above a picture rail, the ceiling height becomes a striking feature, while the color brings a bit of warmth.

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6. Mix up furniture pieces to provide flexible options. Large sectionals are great pieces that fill a room and offer lots of seating. But they’re not always the best option for a living room. Having more flexibility is especially important for those who entertain often. Here, single seating pieces — chairs, a recliner, bar stools — can move around to accommodate guests and overflow as needed.

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7. Go ahead. Put that TV over the fireplace. Whether or not you should put a TV over a fireplace is a hot debate topic. But I’ll venture to say that every design situation should be taken on a case-by-case basis. In this large open-layout living room in Yucca Valley, California, I think it works.

First, the furniture is pulled back enough to prevent too much of an uncomfortable angle. Second, the prominent spot means the TV can be easily viewed from other areas of room — especially important during large gatherings like sporting events, where some people are up and mingling around while others are keeping an eye on the game. Plus, in this situation, the homeowner has the option of moving the TV to a niche to the left of the fireplace if there’s a change in lifestyle habit.

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