3 Mistakes To Avoid When Designing Your Living Room

Designing a living room can quickly become a headache.
Learn how to solve or avoid altogether three major mistakes you may encounter on your track to laying out a new living room.

1. Starting with the TV

Since it occupies a lot of our evenings and weekends, the television has become a central element of any living room (whether we want it to be or not).
Although it is a key part of designing a living room, it shouldn’t always be the focus of your attention when you’re starting out. Priority needs to be given by the key components and activities you want to achieve through the room. For example, do you want to receive friends and family? Or are you planning to use the area as a reading/relaxing part of your home? Don’t forget to ask the other inhabitants of your house for their opinions on the subject.

Put your television aside, and think about your lifestyle, and how you want to spend your time with your family and friends. What are the advantages of the current layout? What changes would you like to make?
Don’t hesitate to look in magazines or online for an endless source of ideas and inspiration. After having created (or imagined) your first diagram, insert the TV into the mix, place it somewhere smart.

2. Having a fear of the empty

Trying too hard to make a new layout for your living room can quickly become a crowded affair. Large pieces of furniture, walls loaded with frames, various accessories scattered across the room. Too much may be, well, too much.
Catalogs and stores make us fall in love with furniture or decorations that are constantly being refreshed and cycled through. These items acquired over the years are not always essential.
An overloaded room becomes less pleasant, and can lose its spacious feeling.

Before jumping straight into designing the living room, start by sorting through your stuff. Ask yourself about every item making up the room. Keep the useful, and set aside the futile.
Go back to the basics, what you need in your life, every day. Once your place and space has been emptied out, and clarified, you can begin planning.

3. Forgetting key details

Blinded by imposing things, like the coffee table or sofa, you can often forget about important details: plugs, doors, windows, radiators, etc.
In the living room, they are continuously useful, especially in your daily life, but can also be real constraints when placing furniture.

Before considering placement of your appliances, lighting and furniture, note down the different outlets present in the room (at least five of them).
Windows must be able to open fully, and also allow a space around your door of at least 3 by 5 feet (both in front of and behind the door).