The living room is the heart of entertainment in your household. It’s where guests will experience your home and where you spend most of your time decompressing. If you want to make a good first impression of your lovely abode, or if you just want a nice place to escape, your living room should be perfect.

A lot goes into designing a quintessentially perfect living room. Interior design has many moving parts and fly-away trends. For the uninitiated, designing a living room can be confusing and an unguided money-sink. 

For those of you dying to know what makes a great living room, read on to find out. 

Color, Color, Color

Often the most fun thing to do, and subtly the most important, is picking your color palette. It’s not as easy as it sounds; thought should go into every choice, especially your hue scheme.

One thing to consider is the psychology behind color theory. It sounds fancier than it is, and it has an obvious result. 

Each color conveys a different meaning — they also have the ability to manipulate emotion and mood. 

For instance, the color red depicts anger and harshness. It can also elicit these feelings. 

Powder blue will incite a peaceful response in viewers. And it’s often representative of innocence and boyhood. 

People use the word “green” to describe people that are jealous or envious. But it can also display the essence of nature.

You should pick the colors you’re going to be using in your living room to be peaceful and inviting. Avoid harsh colors like neons and reds. Instead, choose bright yellows or subtle and soft colors.

It’s also a good idea to determine your primary and secondary colors. The primary color is going to be the main color of your living. The secondary will complement the color as an accent. 

One of the latest trends is to pick a very monotonous, sterile primary color — like blue-grey or white — and complement it with a very bright secondary color, perhaps yellow. 

Whatever you decide to do, don’t pick more than one primary color and at most two similar secondaries. Overcrowding your color scheme looks tacky and thoughtless. 

Pick a Theme 

The next most fun part of designing your living room is picking a unifying theme. 

There are many to choose from, so it might be overwhelming at first to decide. It might help you to look at catalogs. It could surprise you what you’ll fall in love with. 

Some of the most trendy themes that are hitting the design world right now are:

• Rustic
• Contemporary (mid-century-modern)
• Industrial
• Country
• Mediterranean 

Rustic rooms are a taste of the previous century but tastefully brought to modern times. Most of the decor is of old farm tools, craftsman furniture, and colored brown. 

Mid-century-modern has made a full swing from tacky to to-die-for. The 70’s decorum is all the rage right now. But it might be tough getting some of the furniture at the peak of its popularity. 

Industrial is an interesting blend of brick, cold metals, and space. It’s like a fashionable warehouse. 

Country themes are quaint and cabin-like. But don’t go too far with it, or it’ll start to look like the inside of a trailer home. 

A taste of the Mediterranean is making its way to interior design. It was very popular for exterior designs in the early 2000s. 

It might be fun to mix the themes, too. But it’s advised not to get too whacky with the customization. Modern-industrial might work, but country-Mediterranean sounds like a nightmare.

Don’t Clutter up the Place

One big thing to avoid when designing your dream living room is clutter.

Amateur designers tend to throw everything, and that sometimes includes the kitchen sink, into their designs. They think, “you can’t have too many side tables,” but you certainly can. 

There’s beauty in simplicity. 

One big detractor from overcrowding your living room is that it takes away from the uniqueness of each piece. People don’t realize this, but everything in your living room should have its own flair. If there are a dozen lamps and 3 coffee tables, they lose a lot of their innate oomph. 

Cluttering a room with too much decor can also make it look careless and messy. Like there wasn’t thought put into each item in the room. 

You should limit yourself to, at maximum:

• 2-3 lamps (table or free-standing)
• 2 side tables
• 1 coffee table
• 1 sofa
• 1 love seat
• 1 accent chair

This depends on the size of your room, of course, but adding more than that starts to look terrible. And for goodness sake, don’t buy fifteen pillows for your sofa set. 

A Perfect Living Room Knows How to Accessorize

When you’ve got your main furniture picked out, it’s time to accessorize. 

Your accessory decor should fit your theme, as well as the color palette that you’ve chosen. But don’t let that stop you entirely from picking out zany pieces for your living room.

Interesting accessory items can make a stale, albeit beautifully designed, room into something fun. 

These are items that you’ll know you need when you see them. They likely won’t match your furniture, but that’s okay. 

If you want to line your mantle with duck decoys, all the more power to you. If you have to have custom made rocking chair cushions, that’s great, too. It’s your living room, let it be an extension of yourself.

Living the Life

Having the perfect living room is like having the perfect life. When it’s designed well, everything else just seems to work out. Designing such a living room might be difficult for those unfamiliar with the process.

You should pick a color palette that’s comforting and peaceful. Then, pick a theme you’d love to follow. Don’t clutter the living room with too much furniture, and don’t be afraid to decorate with one or two zany items. 

Are you interested in interior design? Check out our other articles to continue learning about home design practices.