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Living rooms are where we spend so much of our time when we’re home.

It’s where we hang out with family, where we entertain guests and where we zone out on our lonesome at the end of a long day.

Since we invest so much of our time here, shouldn’t it be the very best it can be? 😍

Here are 9 tips for a functional living room that’s full of personality, using our eclectic living room as a reference point.

Get the layout right

Most living rooms have the same basic elements; enough seating for a family, a coffee table, a TV and possibly an entertainment unit.

The scale and positioning of these core pieces is crucial if you want to achieve good flow. Your living room should be functional, with room to manoeuvre around furniture while still looking cosy and inviting.

So in a nutshell 👇

• If you have the space and can avoid it, don’t put your sofa on the wall — it restricts flow and can make the room feel claustrophobic and uninviting
• Your entertainment unit should be at least 30cm (or 12 inches) wider than your TV
• Your coffee table should be positioned approximately 35-45cm (or 16-18 inches) away from your sofa
• Generally, your coffee table should be about two thirds the length of your sofa (our coffee table is a little smaller than this, but the round shape and size works better with our layout)
• You should have around 60-90cm (or 23-35 inches) between other large pieces of furniture to allow room to walk

Before you add all the bells and whistles, make sure your key furniture items are positioned in the best possible way. If the core ingredients aren’t right, your recipe’s not going to work!

Create a conversation circle

Most of us have a TV in the living room. When everything is pointing toward it, it can become a bit of an underwhelming focal point.

One way to detract attention away from the TV and make for a more social space is to create a conversation circle with your seating.

By pairing a 3 or 4 seater sofa with two single armchairs adjacent to eachother, you’re creating symmetry and encouraging interaction. Instead of the focus being on the TV, it shifts more toward the centre of the room, which is likely to be a coffee table. This is a great place for the focus to land in a social situation.

In our living room, our armchairs point inwards. They might not be the best vantage point for watching TV, but that’s ok — the three of us can watch TV more comfortably from the big sofa and sit in those armchairs when we’re chatting or chilling.

Personally, I wouldn’t recommend decorating your living room with a sectional, modular or L-shaped sofa. They’re not the best for conversation since people aren’t inclined to sit so close together. They can also hurt the flow of your space by blocking traffic, making it harder to work with. If you really want to prop your feet up, consider an ottoman or armchairs with recliners.

Camouflage your TV

As we talked about above, the TV can often become the focal point of the living room. Creating a conversation circle — especially one where the armchairs are angled away from the TV — will help detract attention away from the TV.

But even still, the TV is bound to become an eyesore in your space. TVs like the Samsung Frame are a gamechanger since they display art when the TV is idle. Some people even hang fancy frames around the TV to really make it look like art!

We don’t have a Samsung Frame TV, but when we’re home and not watching TV, we put a YouTube art playlist on to make it less of an eyesore. The wall our TV is mounted on has been wallpapered with black damask, so when the TV is off, the ugly black box kind of blends into the damask pattern, which to me, is a lot prettier than a black box on top of a white wall.

Apart from the art idea, there are a few other ways to hide, camouflage or just make your TV less of an eyesore. You could 👇

• Install your TV against a beautiful backdrop, such as wallpaper or wall panelling
• Incorporate your TV into a gallery wall (especially if your TV can display art)
• Hang your TV within built-in cabinetry
• Use a retractable projector screen instead of a TV

There are lots of other ideas to completely hide your TV, but some of them can be a little cumbersome. When I want to watch RuPaul’s Drag Race, I want to watch it now! So not completely hiding the TV is OK with me 😉

Choose the right size rug

First of all, yes — you need a rug (here’s why) ✅

Second of all, PLEASE make sure it’s the right size for the space.

Nothing grinds my gears more than a rug that doesn’t tuck under the furniture. When the only thing touching a living room rug is a coffee table on top of it, everything else just feels like it’s in no-mans land.

In a living room, your rug should be at least a few inches wider than your sofa on either side. Either all the feet or at least the front feet of your sofa/armchairs should be on the rug. This helps zone the space and ties everything together.

Here’s a great infographic to help you out 👇

Some of my favourite places to find rugs include:

• Maia Homes (available worldwide – use MISMATCHEDHOME for 10% off)
• Miss Amara (they even have a rug visualiser so you can see how it fits your space)
• Ruggable
• Sydney Rugs Online

READ: 6 reasons why rugs make the room

Express yourself with art

Now, no-one’s saying you need to go as hardcore as we have! 👀

But this is where you do your living, laughing and loving. It should be the youest room there is!

A gallery wall is great if you have a larger area to work with, and it could even incorporate your TV. But if you don’t want to board the gallery wall bandwagon, just one or two statement artworks (or a mirror, clock or tapestry) will make all the difference.

🎬 WATCH: How to hang a gallery wall

Browse Pinterest and Instagram for inspo — but make it personal. Don’t just buy the first pretty thing you see in a department store.

Some of my favourite places to find art include Instagram and Etsy (there are so many great artists to support), vintage markets, thrift shops and online printers like Fy.

We’ve recently got lots of new prints from Fy, which all arrive beautifully framed and ready to hang (plus our code MISMATCHEDHOME gets you a 20% discount).

Have a core colour scheme

Eclectic interiors are characterised by their liberal use of colour… however there is still some rhyme and reason to it.

Having a few key colours (and neutrals) that you repeat around the room will help unify your space and create harmony.

Because our living room features a big gallery wall full of colour, we’ve stuck to a fairly strict colour scheme for the rest of the room.

🎬 WATCH: Midimalism

For any room you’re decorating, it’s a good idea to stick within a warm or cool colour palette.

Generally, warm colour palettes are recommended for living rooms since they feel cosier and more playful than cool colours, which are better for smaller, more relaxing spaces, like bedrooms and bathrooms.

Apart from the myriad of colours in our gallery wall, the colour palette in our living room is warm and mostly neutral, featuring brown, green, white, black and beige. This restricted palette allows the art in the gallery wall (which are all in neutral frames) to do most of the talking. We’ve repeated the lime green of the armchairs in places along the gallery wall, while plants along the shelves and by the window add even more greenery to the space 🪴

If we didn’t have such an intense gallery wall, we’d probably be bolder with colour in our living room, but for us, the gallery wall is what it’s all about. Luckily a house is full of rooms to experiment in, right?

Set the mood with layered lighting

During the day, natural lighting is number one. But when the sun goes down and you’re cosying up with your other half while bingeing Netflix and ice-cream, mood lighting is what you want.

To set the mood, you need lamps and candles. Think about layering your lighting, with interesting table lamps and candles on your coffee table, shelves and other surfaces. Low floor lamps and taller, scupltural floor lamps will help distribute the lighting on different levels around the room 💡

🎬 WATCH: Day to Night

Lamps are kinda like plants; you can never have too many. In our living room, our gallery wall shelf has small table lamps and candles dotted along the entire length, including a rotating disco light that bounces sunlight around the room at certain points during the day.

For overhead lighting, although we avoid turning them on, they should still be pretty. Think of pendants and chandeliers as sculpture for your ceiling and a way to add life to the often overlooked fifth wall.

Lots of our lighting is from Residence Supply, who ship internationally. You can use our code MISMATCHEDHOME for 10% off.

Hang curtains for cosiness

Don’t leave your windows naked! Window furnishings aren’t just practical, they also work wonders in making a room feel cosy and complete.

I don’t know about you, but as soon as the sun goes down, I draw the curtains. This just shuts the world out and makes me feel safe and secure inside, like I’m wrapped in a warm blanket.

If you’ve got big sliding doors or a large window, I recommend hanging your curtains high and wide to make the room feel bigger 🪟

Hanging your curtain rod or track at the top of your wall (or just below the cornice) will help give the illusion of higher ceilings. And let’s face it — you’re doing nothing with that bit of wall, so it might as well be decorated!

🎬 WATCH: Hang your curtains high

Equally, your curtains should be wider than your windows too. If your window takes up most of the wall, your curtains should go wall to wall and floor to ceiling.

Extra tip: Install a cute pair of curtain holdbacks to keep your curtains bundled up nicely when they’re open during the day.

Accessorise!

Interior design is a lot like fashion. A jeans and t-shirt combo isn’t all that exciting, but once you add some jewellery, a belt and a handbag, you’ve got a bit more to work with.

Think of plants, candles and cushions as your jewellery, belt and handbag.

Decorate your coffee table with a couple of coffee table books and a statement candle 🕯️

Got a bare empty corner? Add a big plant to it, like a fiddle leaf fig. In fact, you want at least one plant in your living room to add that relaxing element of nature and bring the outside in.

🎬 WATCH: Art, Books, Plants & Colour

And don’t forget to add something soft for a bit of texture. Your sofa will be a lot cosier with cushions in a contrasting colour to your sofa. Instead of getting four of the same, switch up the colours and patterns to add some visual interest. You could also sling a sheepskin rug over an armchair to add even more warmth and texture to the space.

If you’ve got shelves in your living room, line them with decorative boxes and baskets for extra storage. That way, you’ll have somewhere to store all your remote controls, extra blankets and other miscellanous things when people pop over at the last minute 😉

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