Design Ideas for a Small Living Room

Living with a Small Room: Small Space Interior Design Ideas

Apartments and condos and small spaces… oh my! If you have small spaces in your home, you may be longing for a little more elbowroom. But are larger rooms really necessary? With a few of these decorating tips, we can help you work with what you have to turn your cramped quarters into a comfortable, lovely complement to your style.

I. Go From Claustrophobic to Cozy with Darker Hues and the Right Lighting

Dramatic Uplights Expand a Room You've probably heard the common decorating tip that you should never use dark colors in a small room. Although this is sound advice, it is not always the case. The right lighting can make a darker-hued wall color open a space up like never before.

When grouped with dramatic lighting and soft upholstery, dark colors can turn a tight space into a cozy, welcoming nook. Dramatic wall lighting is perfect for small spaces because it creates a distinctive lighting effect, visually expanding the room with ambient light. Try a wall sconce with a light colored glass, or another wall fixture that sheds light upwards for the same effect.

II. The Right Furniture Makes All the Difference in a Small Room

You've probably also heard that the eye travels more quickly through a small space, so it is important to interrupt its movement as little as possible. To achieve this, eliminate obstacles in the room. Go for larger, fewer pieces of furniture instead of many small pieces that might cause a cluttered effect. The farther the eye can see into the room, the better.

Our armless accent chairs, low benches and ottomans are ideal for opening up a small space. Choose double-duty pieces of furniture like our storage benches whenever possible. They not only look stylish, but are great for tucking away items.

Decorating a Small Living Space Avoid blocking windows and doors when arranging furniture and try to open up areas of the floor. Opt for light, airy colors and fabrics for your furniture pieces, which will appear to push walls back. Think butter yellows, soothing tone-on-tones, and pale greens and blues.

When Choosing your floor covering, look for an area rug in either a solid color or with a pattern that is not too busy. Also, be sure that the rug is small enough to be a fair distance away from each wall. The space between the edge of the rug and the edge of your floor will make the room appear larger to the eye.

When searching for custom framed art for a small space, one large print is better than many smaller prints. Another great piece of wall decor is a large wall mirror. Mirrors reflect more natural light and appear to enlarge the room.

Avoid Clutter at All Costs

Decorating Ideas for a Small Room We all have it – stuff. But we can't just get rid of our stuff to accommodate a small room – can we? The answer is to find great storage solutions.

Take a look around the room that has you feeling cornered and ask yourself one question: what makes sense in the room? The first step to tackling clutter is tucking away items that just don't make sense. Are extra throws and pillows taking over the formal living room instead of the family room? Try hiding them during the warmer months inside our stylish storage ottomans.

Let us not forget about the items that do make sense for the room. Instead of carrying your mail and keys across the home to the kitchen table, try incorporating one of our writing desks right into the entryway. It makes a great surface for writing down your grocery list or paying the bills.

The most important lesson when decorating a small living space is to visualize what works best for your home. While your room can be beautiful, make sure it is just as functional, too. One of the great things about decorating a small room is that it is a challenge. It's the perfect chance for you to delve into your creativity and try out new ideas.

The best laid plans & the disadvantage of berry bushes

Justin's 'cruising' now so I temporaily switched out our lucite cocktail table in the living room with an ikea slipcovered ottoman from our family room.  It'll stay in here until he can walk & I don't have to worry about him breaking his face on the table.   The look is a bit cuter than I like for my living room, but since it's temporary, I can deal.  Whatever's there always seems to be toy central and here's a quick pic now: 

{I tried to get Justin in the picture but he got away}

The beauty of slipcovers is that you can wash them whenever you need to.  The not-so-beautiful part is that with my little guys and Justin's tendency to spit-up, that'll be fairly often. 

Well, as expected, we had our first major spit-up on the ottoman so I took off the top slipcover & washed it.  Everything came out fine and I laid it out to dry in the backyard.  That evening, as Dave & I were having a drink before dinner, I looked out the window and saw this:

Seriously???  Dave went down for confirmation as I took these pics from the living room... (ever-helpful am I ;)

{Yup.  Berry bird poop.  On the ottoman.}

We will now be attempting the "you can always bleach white slipcovers" thing. 

Crazy carpets

This is the first portion of the crazy carpets, and which began the series. Currently there is material for another part, but permanently out new, so there will be other parts. We will not rush in many descriptions and explanations, because the pictures show everything.

Start with my favorite carpet Sunny side up, which in combination with yellow cushions, like a fried poached egg.

Should my other favorite Grand Grand Splatch, which represents the pool with interesting effect, and even has tramplinche as a seat. Large is 3.8 meters to 3,4 m.

Continue with the Persian carpet-puzzle that can easily be ordered and deterioration. I suppose there are no problems with maintenance shoved the pieces in the washing machine and ready.

And a rug with a picture of the Sacramento River from a bird’s eye. It is a pedestrian bridge connecting the Sacramento International Airport with parking. They call it Flying carpet.

The latter is the case of a carpet company JAB ANSTOETZ. It is handmade and is honored with the award “red dot award: “product design 2006″, which is a major achievement in design.

And if you want to look for these extravagant Kimi in the nearest market and the interior will make you feel really, really well in his own house.

Pure Project #14: Ride Down Memory Lane

When I was little and I used to visit my grandparents lakehouse during the summer (where my dad lives now) one of my favorite things to do was pick flowers.  They were everywhere in Antioch.  We used to make these little pressed flower arrangements in the dirt called "madonnas."  Have you ever heard of these?  I tried googling them and nothing came up so I don't know if maybe it's just something my Grandma Maestranzi made up??  Anyway, I remember doing it with my cousin Tracy.  It's so one of those things we probably shouldn't have been doing on our own, but it's one of my best memories.  Tracy & I went into the garage and filled up a paper bag with glass jars.  She hammered the jars and broke the glass.  (I was probably 5 and she was maybe 12? seriously.)  Then we took the "good" shards of glass and saved them for our maddonnas.    

{Tracy & I---- hammering glass for madonnas this summer... 20+ years later}

Then we picked a bunch of flowers and made little arrangements in the dirt and covered them with the broken glass pieces. 

We used to make little "tours" around the yard and take people from spot to spot to check out our madonnas.  This year we thought it would be fun to do madonnas with our kids. 

{Francesca, Christian & Maddie}

They girls had so much fun picking flowers and Christian just loved being with them.  This time, I handled the glass shards, but we let the girls make arrangements.  (Francesa is my cousin Michelle's daughter and Maddie is Tracy's daughter..  and Christian's mine :)

The photos really don't show how pretty they are...

{lily petals & weeds}

...  But I can share Maddie's reaction to them with you.  We wanted to surprise the girls so I had everything ready to go and did a couple of madonnas myself to show the girls for when they came outside to help.  When Maddie saw them she was wide eyed.  She has this soft little voice and she's a pretty chill kid who doesn't get excited about just anything.  She just stared at them in awe and said really slowly, "Oh...what are these beautiful things called?!!" It was too funny.

  They're literally just flowers & leaves pressed into dirt and covered in glass, but to a kid there's just something so beautiful & special about them. 

So this week's project is to take a minitrip down memory lane and recreate an old pastime.  Do something you loved to do as a kid and do it with your kids if you have them.  If you don't, do it on your own or with a friend and I think you'll be surprised at how much you still enjoy it.  -maybe it's a craft, a game, a meal, drawing, coloring, etc---   IF you're up for madonnas, it's also a fun tradition to start with your family and kids love it.  (just make sure that you're in charge of the glass unlike when we were kids.)  Let us know how the projects go and be sure to link up if you join in!!

White House Interior Design Homewares brand Tine K Home

This white house interior design could easily be characterized as elegant and luxurious interior design. In order to highlight all these stylish beauties, most of walls and wooden floors are painted in pure white. White dominant colors make a room look clean and neat interior and give the impression of luxury, this home belongs to Tine Kjeldsen, owner and designer of homewares brand Tine K Home. Even though there is so much cold colors in the interior it’s still comfy thanks to all wooden objects and other decor elements.

It presents itself as country house, located on Funen island near Odense in Denmark. The cool thing is that there is no sign of black color anywhere, even though it’s usually the main companion of the white. The house even become the main article of Elle Decoration UK in March 2010. "Photos by Birgitta Wolfgang Drejer"

3D Interior design for Mac

Interiors is multi-threaded and optimized. Simply put, it means Interiors performs faster. It's not only the interface that we have optimized, the latest version has been fine tuned under the hood to give you the fastest Interiors yet. The Microspot renderer is now multi-processor aware so if you have more than one or a dual-core processor the renderer will take advantage and use them all, the result, rendering times are slashed.

Contemporary Ranch Style House Remodeling Design

This ranch house totally changed into contemporary modern house. With slope site, this house has spilt level and all corners have outdoors space for daily and party activities. Open plan concept applied continuous form from inside to outside. For the kitchen, aluminum kitchen furniture applied with cheerful colors of appliances. New exterior finishes were chosen to blend the house with the shadowed tree trunks of the surrounding woods and windows and doors were replaced and reconfigured to optimize views to the surrounding landscape. Some walls removed to make bigger space. Interior design fulfill with accent details to cheer up the ambience. Designed by Architecture and Design.

Home Interior Designs

Microspot Interiors Professional provides powerful and simple solutions for home interior designs.

Home Interior Designs

Our award-winning Interiors software was developed specifically for home interior designs. Visualize a new living room design, a larger bathroom, a brand new kitchen and more. Turn your ideas and resources into an interactive 3d design. If you are searching for a powerful and low cost Mac program tailored for home interior designs, look no further.

Hometown Rooftop House Design Ideas

Roof top usually create as garden, but how if you have to have larger living space for optimizing privacy especially in hometown? At this house, rooftop becomes mini village for bedrooms. With blue outdoors colors, building on roof and space for playful activity beside it really enhance house appearance.

Parapet walls with windows surround the new village. Trees, tables, open-air showers and benches are added, optimizing the rooftop life. By finishing all elements with a blue poly-urethane coating a new “heaven” appears. It creates a crown on top of the monument. The addition can be seen as a prototype for a further densification of the old and existing city. It adds a roof life to the city. It explores the costs for the beams, infrastructure, and extra finishes, and it ultimately aims to be lower than the equivalent ground price. Designed by MVRDV.

Last Hurrah of Summer

There's something magical about summer, and although Fall might be my favorite season, I'm never quite ready for Summer to end.  Those lazy summer days I remember from childhood seem to have been replaced by jam-packed hectic days of "to do lists, " work and maintaining a household. 

{My dad on his boat, 1982}

Time seems to fly by more quickly every year.  It really is crazy.  Family time is more important to me now than ever. We're heading down the Corolla (in the Outer Banks, NC) for our vacation next week with a quick detour in High Point today and tomorrow. 

But I cannot wait to hit that beach, even if it is a cloudy stormy day like this one a few years back:

 

I can't wait to READ A BOOK...  FICTION, not a design one.   (well, possibly 1 or 2 design books ;)

Hit the waves...  and maybe actually learn to surf this year.  (I've never attempted... pregnancy, new baby, the usual)

I love Corolla.  My family's been taking me there every August since I was kid and Dave used to go there as a kid too with family friends.  He's from New Jersey and how funny is it that all those years back, we've both been going to the same beach at the same time every year?  We'd all hang out at Tim Buck II, eating icecream and chatting it up with other kids, but we never met.   I also spent a summer working there in college (At Sundog's if you ever go!!) and Dave frequently visited his girlfriend-at-the-time who also worked there that very same summer. Still, we'd never met.  Funny how life works.  ...Now we go every year as a family and plan on continuing the tradition for the rest of our lives. 

Some places just feel like "home" even when you only go once a year. 

So this week, we're going "home..."  I particularly love this moment:

...The first time you hit the beach...  You've just taken the stairs up the dunes and you can hear the waves and smell it and you know you  have the whole week ahead of you to do nothing but be. 

laugh-read-eat-chill

savor these last couple of weeks.