I was watching HGTV, one of the decorating/furniture shows, and the interior decorator said never to line your furniture up along the walls,but instead, move all the furniture away from the walls, to the center of the room and use a big run to anchor all the pieces to the center (making sure the front legs of the furniture set on the rug). My dilemia is that I think my living room is too small to move everything to the center. It would be crowded and look much smaller than it is. Anyone have any suggestions on how to arrange furniture in a small living space?
Just remember that there are no hard and fast rules on decorating. You're the one who has to live in your living room, not a decorator. I've seen many lovely rooms that no one could possibly live in comfortably.
Scale is key when you're furnishing a small space. Keep your lines simple and clean, using wall art to create drama and color.
Try to have your pieces be multi-functional...like a coffee table that can also serve as extra seating and nesting tables that can be pulled around to temporary seating locations. There are many magazines that specialize in decorating small rooms so browse through them for more ideas.
Storage is always an issue so when shopping for occasional tables and cabinets really think about what you need to store in each room before buying that pretty thing you feel that you just 'have to have'.
Have fun!
Posts: 358 | Location: St Louis, MO (Zone 6) | Registered: Oct 31, 2007
I'm of the mind that furniture looks better away from the walls, but there are circumstances when that doesn't always apply well.
My living room is only 10 1/2' wide, but I still placed my couch away from the wall, and it looks great.
The best advice I can give in order to place your furniture well is to get some graph paper or use a computer drawing program and graph out the dimensions of the room and the dimensions of the furniture. Then play around by placing the pieces in the room in many different arragements to see what can work. Just keep in mind that the rule of thumb for a path between pieces is that 18" is as small as you want to go.
