A Guide to Modern Living Room Decoration

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A Guide to Modern Living Room Decoration

Jordan Gaither · Aug 29, 2009

This living room decoration guide will give you the basics necessary to turn your sparse living quarters into a unique, self-styled pad that you can take pride in.

There are three main points to cover in the arena of modern living room decoration: The Furniture, The Art, and The Effect.

Placement and Color of Furniture

Believe it or not, when people enter your living room for the first time, your furniture will say a lot to them. It says whether you have good taste in colors, whether you know how to properly place furniture to maximize your space, and whether you’ve held on to your scuffed, chipped college furniture or have moved up to less-worn pieces. Hint: as much as you loved that coffee table from your first apartment, soda-can rings and splintery legs are out-of-place in an adult’s living room.

The first thing to do is obtain furniture that matches, or re-decorate your mismatched pieces so they do match. An afternoon of sanding and re-staining mismatched wood furniture can work wonders for your living room, and cost far less than purchasing new. To ensure that styles and colors match, a good trick is to encase worn-out pillows in new material; cheap, easy, and makes old pillows brand-new again. Try to use modern color combinations such as dark brown/light blue, leaf green/burgundy, etc.

Art to Decorate the Walls

A good living room needs more than just places to sit and put your drinks. A living room, by definition made for “living”, needs color and life to really make it perfect. A great modern living room benefits greatly from framed prints, stretched canvas paintings or unique 3D art pieces. If you’re not artistically inclined, a great many of these things can be found at local art fairs, thrift stores, and even online.

If you are artistically inclined, then your living room will be a much greater reflection of your personality. Buy some pre-stretched canvas and paint supplies at your local craft store, and throw together a fun, colorful painting. It doesn’t matter if it’s good, or if it even looks like anything; as long as you like it, it’ll make both a great piece of wall art as well as a talking point.

As for 3D pieces, a wonderful example is the Book Lamp. Go to local bookstores and find a stack of damaged hardcover books. Leather-bound is best, but any intact hard cover will do. Remove the dust jacket, drill a hole through the center of each book, and thread the pipe from a simple hardware-store lamp kit through the center. Anchor the bottom with a large washer and buy a fun, tasteful lampshade, and you have a unique piece of art that’s also useful! These are just suggestions; use your imagination to make your space yours!

The Desired Result

The bottom line is this: You want your living room to be tasteful, fun and inviting. The effect should be one of simplicity, space, cooperating colors and, most importantly of all, comfort. Don’t let your living room become a museum (after all, you have to live there)!

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Jordan Gaither: I’m a Communications major by trade, an artist by choice, a welder by day and a dancer by night (Okay, I made that last part up). Having lived in a succession of cramped, oddly-shaped apartments, I have a wealth of personal experience in apartment living, as well as arranging and decorating to maximize effect and livable space.

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