The living room is the heart of your home. From the name itself, it should be the life of the house—the part where the inhabitants mingle and foster good relations. A place that promotes relaxation while prompting the whole family to interact and be lively.
Unfortunately, living rooms often get left out in terms of looks and are the last place to get an upgrade, simply because it’s a room for everyone. It’s not the kitchen that the mom badly wants to expand or the children’s bedrooms that get updated as they grow up.
Often, there’s very little left in a home improvement budget left for the living room. Fortunately, there are quick and easy ways to transform its dated, boring look to something more lively and inspiring. With a bit of creativity and a lot of elbow grease, the living room makeover can have a great impact on the overall look and feel of the house. By tweaking one or two elements in it, you can add a pop of colour, light, and life to a room.
Without further delay, here are five great living room makeover ideas to transform the room’s dated look into something that would bring the family together.
Change the colour, boost the appeal
For simple living room makeovers, changing the colour scheme is probably the most impactful and transformational. It can transform the room’s appeal from the drab 80s or 90s to the lively 2010s or the futuristic 2020s. That’s why it is important to plan your colour scheme way before laying down the first coat of paint.
You can start by coming up with a mood board along with the rest of your family so that you can gather their input and minimize mistakes. This will also help you stay on top of your budget, and keep the colours and patterns in the room in perfect balance. Nothing too fancy, nothing edgy that will make you want to slap a fresh coat of paint as soon as the last one dries.
If the budget is tight, you can still update the colour scheme of your living room using wallpaper. Even a single panel of wallpaper that’s framed can impact the whole look, adding another element that draws the eyes away from old, clunky sofas that would be harder and more expensive to replace. Your creativity is the only limit when remodelling your living room, as you can update your living room’s colour scheme without really busting your home improvement budget.
Lighting up works wonders
You might not notice, but the most dated living room ideas have one thing in common: they have poor lighting. Aside from the big brown bulk of a sofa, bad lighting also creates a dark, heavy ambience in what could be a very welcoming room. Yellow fluorescent lighting won’t help improve the look, as it makes the whole room even sadder.
So how can you improve the living room lighting?
The best way is to let natural light in. Most of the time, living rooms have large windows spanning whole walls. Unfortunately, these are covered by window treatments, thick curtains, heavy blinds, or anything that seemed to suck the life out of the room. Simplify window treatments, use thinner curtains with lighter colours, or don’t put anything at all. Let your living room be full of light, and you’ll notice family members start staying there for longer periods of time.
You can also choose to replace old yellow lights with brighter white LED lights, which are not only more energy-efficient but are also more appealing to the eyes. If you have a lamp or a light fixture with busted lights, be sure to replace them with new ones, so that they could be used and add more lighting for the room.
Improve your flooring
Just like everything else old in your living room, your dated carpet also brings down the appeal and makes the whole area feel drab. For a while, homeowners gravitated towards carpets, thus putting them in every place imaginable. But nowadays, it’s better to strip those carpets and expose the wood or concrete underneath.
It’s important to decide early on if you want to totally remove all the carpet in order to avoid blunders that would require reworking. Read this post to see the most common causes of rework and learn how to prevent them.
When you remodel living room floors, a solid floor will greatly improve the look, as it is able to reflect the light coming in from your windows. It creates a cleaner, fresher feel. If the carpet’s been around for more than a decade, you’d also probably notice that your nose is less stuffy after eliminating the allergen-infested rug.
Shelves add more storage and also improves the look of the walls
If you notice clutter building up in the floor space of the living room, perhaps it’s time to add a few layers of shelves in the walls. These don’t take up any square footage, and would also act as a display area for some of your favourite things. This living room remodel is a win-win for everyone, as you’re able to tidy up the room, and have enough space to display pictures of the family, some art collections, and more.
You can also use these shelves to break the monotony of an otherwise boring stretch of wall. Paint your shelves to add a pop of colour, and you won’t have to spend a lot of painting the walls themselves. A bit of effort goes a long way, and it applies to add more shelves to update the look of your living room.
Bring life back to your living room by adding actual plants
Again, with the living room now adequately lit by the sun thanks to lighter window treatments, you can now add more elements of life to update its overall look. Bring in a couple of indoor plants and position them near the window so that they’ll get enough sunlight even when inside.
Aside from the aesthetic improvement, adding plants also gives you fresher air. Granted, you need to water them on a regular basis, but that’s a small sacrifice to make if you truly want to update the look of your living room. You can also add smaller plants on your newly installed shelves, as long as they get adequate lighting from time to time.