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Decor & Renovating Interior Design // Living Room // Tips for Decorating Your Living Room 
For most of us the living room is the heart of our homes. It’s the place we go to relax and spend time with each other. Many living rooms include our entertainment centers as well. If you’re thinking about improving the appearance of your living room you may have already started searching the Internet for decorating tips.
While you can find many good ideas in Internet decorating articles, few ask you to consider the all important question: How do you use your living room? Why is this question important?
The functional use of your living room should dictate the decorating components you use to shape the appearance of the room. As an example, if you rarely entertain friends in your home and your living room is primarily used as a center of activity for you and your young children, you probably shouldn’t be thinking about adding large standing plants to your living room. Here are some things to keep in mind as you think through both how you would like to use your living room and how it might be decorated.
If your television is sitting atop a rolling cabinet or table, it’s time to consider an entertainment center. If you’re willing to spend some time looking through decorating magazines to get ideas for your living room you’ll see many examples of entertainment centers and how they can provide a dramatic focal point.
Organize your furniture and accessory tables to provide free traffic flow throughout the room without interfering with the focal point. If your only exit from an easy chair or a recliner involves walking in front of the entertainment center, try to rearrange the furniture.
Add things to the living room which are personal to you. Good designers tell us home design and décor should make statements about the people who live within. If family – both immediate and extended – is deeply engrained in your value system, decorate your walls and accent pieces with pictures of parents, grandparents, siblings, and children.
For those of you for whom family is less important, look to other things. If you are a lover of great art, mount reproductions of your favorite artists on your wall. A beautifully framed reproduction of Van Gogh’s Starry Night or Sunflowers makes a statement to your visitors about who you are and what’s important to you. If travel is your passion, think about adding some of the treasures you’ve collected throughout the room.
Almost all lounge decorating projects involve color. It is not necessary to repaint the room to liven up the color scheme of the room. Throw pillows, scatter rugs, afghans, area rugs, plants, picture frames, and wall hangings are all ways to add color to a living room without repainting.
If you do wish to repaint remember the principle about a home making a statement about you. Perhaps you’ve lived with neutral, “boring beige” walls for years, in the belief that neutral colors appeal to everyone. What’s important is what appeals to you. If you’re a bold and daring kind of person, select bold and daring colors.
