As the name suggests, the living room is where people live. It needs to be equipped with the things that keep you entertained, and it must be a warm, inviting, welcoming room. This was true before the pandemic forced people to spend more time at home. It’s even truer now.
Everybody wants their living room to be cozy and snug, but people have budgetary constraints and their own personal tastes, and that’s OK! You don’t need to necessarily throw a pile of money at the room if you’re mindful of things like the furnishings, temperature, cleanliness, and even its humidity.
With that in mind, here are some general ideas you can riff on to create the perfect environment in your living room.
Furniture Built to Last
A lot of stores today sell furniture that may look great in a flyer or online advertisement but erodes after months of use, not years. Couches should be able to stand up to years of cozying up watching movies!
Don’t get hung up on the style or how the fabric appears in ads. What is the underlying construction like? Did they cut corners? If you spend only a few hundred on a couch you’ll need to replace in a year or two, you’ll just need to buy a new one. It ends up costing less money upfront but more over the long term.
Buying a used couch may be difficult. There may be unsavoury stains on the fabric or considerable wear and tear. If you can find a clean used couch that’s in good condition, one where the size and style are a good fit for the room, that’s great! There are a lot of boxes to tick there.
If you decide to splurge on a couch, make sure it’s the right size, shape, fabric, and style. You want it to seat a large enough group of people comfortably. When you land the right couch, you’ll be eager for movie night so you can sit in it and get cozy for an extended period.
Natural Materials Only
One defining aspect of the farmhouse country style is the widespread use of wood. Wooden furniture is warm and beautiful to look at, but it’s more than just an aesthetic. Wood is the perfect building material because trees are on the property and can be harvested as lumber to make shelves, tables, chairs, and more.
If you’re looking for farmhouse country style modern country cottage living room ideas, use the same principle that they use in the country. Fill your home with natural materials like wood and leather rather than cheap synthetic substitutes made by cheap labour in foreign countries.
If you’re ambitious or a determined hobbyist, you can find DIY videos online of people making their own furniture. It’ll save you lots of money, and while your first pieces of furniture may not be showstoppers, you’ll feel a wonderful sense of accomplishment and improve over time.
Keeping it Clean
It doesn’t matter how beautifully the interior décor of a room is designed. If it’s dirty, it won’t feel like home. Thankfully, we live in a modern era where cleaning doesn’t need to be a tedious chore.
Just look for the best cordless vacuum for hardwood floors or carpets, depending on the type of flooring you have. When vacuuming is easy and convenient, you’re more likely to do it. Today’s vacuums are also quieter, so you won’t hear that disturbing buzz that makes you temporarily want the TV or stereo louder.
If you have a pet, you know how regularly vacuum is required. The HEPA filters on today’s vacuums pick up more fur and dander than they used to, as those little microns of dust no longer escape. You should choose the best vacuums for hardwood floors after reading verified user reviews and considering the matter carefully.
You don’t want to keep buying new machines because you thought the inexpensive one that looked good would suffice. There are new, modern tools like Swiffer that can do a quick surface-level clean, but the decision to clean your floors with vacuum cleaners will ensure you pick up the smaller dust particles that escape the broom.
Find the most suitable vacuum for your floor and budget and, hopefully, it will provide years of cleanliness for you and your home.
Wall Art
Decoratively filling up the space in your living room often involves hanging things on the walls. If you are a serious art collector, you don’t need an online blog to tell you what’s good. Hang your Picassos where you think they look good!
Most people aren’t in such a position, and that’s perfectly OK. Perhaps you have personal, sentimental treasures you want to use as art. It could be a painting from a child or grandchild, antlers you found on a hike, sports collectibles, or whatever else.
If you’d like to put up pictures of family and friends, make sure the framing is high enough quality and fits the room’s décor. For example, wooden frames may complement a warm country living room. However, you can use a bolder colour to make them pop if you feel like there’s too much wood in the room. A different, more modern frame made of metal may create an interesting contrast.
You don’t want to clog the room by hanging too much on the walls. Let the space breathe, utilize negative space, and ensure there’s harmony overall. By all means, take on some home DIYs and build your own custom frames.
So long as you’re mindful of considerations like the above, pick whatever approach works best for you.
Keeping it Warm
Your country-style living room may look warm, but it needs to be warm, too. It won’t matter how special the décor is if the temperature is uncomfortably cold.
Look online for the best electric fireplace to give a traditional touch to heat things up. Sure, wood-burning fireplaces may have extra charm, but do you really want to be buying and chopping wood by the cord?
If you want a less atmospheric but more straightforward way to keep your living room warm this winter, look for the best space heater for large rooms to get those snug temperatures. Winter is a great time to defy the sub-zero temperatures outside and get cozy with friends and family watching movies under a blanket, but you don’t want the room to be too cold. The Danish concept of “hygge,” finding comfort in warm and simple and soothing things, involves confronting the cold and emerging triumphant and warm on the other side.
Get that blanket and pair of cozy socks ready, but get the room to a normal temperature before you do.
Everybody’s Needs
The living room needs to be a space that caters to everybody’s needs…even your pet’s! It’s not a bad idea to devote a corner of the room to your furry friends making that their sleeping headquarters.
You can keep your dog space clean by reserving a spot for their food and water bowls. Depending on the size of your dog and their nature, they’ll have boundaries or limits to where they can and can’t go, such as on the couch, but sharing a space means leaving them a big enough chunk to feel at home there too.
Your K9 friends may not have the sensitivities of an interior decorator, but you still need to take their needs into consideration.
Making the Air Feel Right
Once the décor is in place and the temperature is comfortable, the final touch may be getting the right level of humidity. Dry air makes your skin crack and can cause the wood in the room to warp while having too much moisture can cause mould, wet stains, or mildew to form.
Consult the reviews of the best small room humidifiers of 2024 before making your purchase. The humidity levels may not be the first thing to strike you when you walk into a room, but over time they’ll make a huge difference in comfort and even extend the lifetime of some of your belongings.
For example, every guitar player knows about the importance of humidifying their instrument! A guitar is a living piece of wood, and if the neck gets warped by excessive dryness, it will be harder to play, go out of tune easier, and perhaps even break.
The strings get set further from the guitar neck and may even create annoying buzz sounds that can ruin the music. You want to breathe healthy air, and this means controlling the moisture too.
Everybody has their own idea of what their ideal living room will look like, even if people strive for many of the same goals. They want a comfortable, welcoming environment in which to spend quality time with friends, family, and for quiet nights alone. Keep the above recommendations in mind, and your living room will give you pleasure for years to come.
