A living room is calming, cozy, and personal. Whether you’re an apartment dweller or a homeowner, you probably spend most of your waking hours in your living room. From choosing the right living room furniture to how you use lighting, colours, and décor, it influences the feel of the area. It’s worth investing the time in thinking about how to add warmth to a living room and personalize it.
Here are some easy ways to make your living room a warm and welcoming place.
1. Warm Colors
The best way to design a warm living room is to start with warm colours. Rich, neutral colours, borrowing from red, orange, or yellow tones, are best. Play with colour throughout the room. Add accents, artwork, and other decorative elements accordingly.
2. Take Away the Cold
Limit the cold materials in your living room. Do not use plastics or reflective metals, or anything industrial. Avoid synthetic materials or any element of design that comes across as cold. While something like a hard cement floor is impossible to remove, remove anything you can detract from efforts to keep the room warm.
3. Warm Furniture
When looking at your living room furniture, pick out your couches and chairs in warm textures. The softer your couch is, the more someone sitting on it will be comfortable and enjoy what’s happening in the room. You can further enhance furniture by covering it in warm textures from knit throw blankets or soft pillows. Check out a furniture store for more pieces you can add to your room.
4. Add Layers
Your living room should feel a little like home. A lot of homes naturally end up with accumulated material layers. Use this! Do the same. Add layers. Use materials like throw blankets, pillows, rugs, and similar textiles. This softens the room.
5. Cozy Fabrics
Be careful with what fabrics you bring into your living room. You don’t want to irritate anyone’s skin. The coziest fabrics include plush velvet, silk, fleece, chenille, and wool. They can be used across living room furniture, window treatments, and various parts of the room.
6. Nature and Plants
Bring a little bit of soothing nature indoors for you to enjoy. Some go all out and paint their living room walls with nature-inspired hues. You don’t have to do that, though. Your favourite plant or greenery is more than enough to add the sort of warmth you want.
7. Put More Wood In
Wood is naturally warm, unlike stone, which is rather cold and synthetics which altogether lack any sort of life. Add more wood to your living room to get a warmer feel. There are many ways to do so, too, i.e. coffee tables, accent objects, home décor, wood coasters, and wood shelving.
8. Add a Rug
Cold, hard floors can kill the warmth you want. Include an area rug as part of your living room furniture layout. This way, you will always be on fabric when sitting in your living room. You can use the rug to anchor the room as well. Try to have the rug in a warm colour and made from a cozy material.
9. Add a Bookshelf
Even if you aren’t the biggest reader, a small bookshelf filled with warm décor or a collection of books always adds warmth. This is also somewhere you can set your favourite literature and add more of your personality into the mix.
10. Install a Gas Fireplace
The aesthetic of a gas fireplace and the heat it generates will add tremendous warmth to your living room. A faux fireplace can add the right tone to the room and enhance the luxurious feeling.
11. Add a Few Candles
Another way to add the warmth of a flame is to use candles. Candles make the room feel cozy, and the bigger the candle, the better. Just keep your candles out of reach of wandering pets or young children.
12. Soft, Ambient Lighting
Candles and fireplaces work so well in a living room because they are examples of soft, ambient lighting. Even if you don’t have these elements, you can still get soft lighting from table lamps, floor lamps, and string lights. Always opt for warm bulbs over cool bulbs. Also, avoid overhead lighting, which is often harsh and uninviting, unless you need to have it.
13. Install Some Wall Art
Art of the right colour and design can be very warm inside a living room. Art will add personality to the walls and make your living room feel less empty. Bare white walls can be very cold and impersonal. Don’t leave them like that. Add art to bare walls, and you’ll make the room yours.
14. Build from Your Centerpiece
Select a centrepiece for your living room. This is often a mounted flat-screen but can be a piece of art, architecture, or home décor. Build from that. To achieve warmth, you shouldn’t busy up your living room with too much to look at. Have a single centrepiece. Pare everything else down.
