5 Tips on How to Decorate a Long Living Room
Decorating the living room is often one of the centerpieces of the whole home. However, a long living room can be more difficult to furnish.
As a general rule, a long living room layout should emphasize the width and break up the length for the eye.
In this post, we’ve assembled 5 tips and some general advice on how to decorate a long living room. Keep reading to find out!
What Should I Put in a Living Room?
Living rooms can be used for all sorts of different arrangements, but at its core, most people will have seating and a television somewhere in the mix. It is the other pieces that can add or detract from the overall feeling of the living room.
For example, you can go for a separate seating area, a breakfast nook, or a small office space in a larger space. For a smaller area, you can add some shelving, storage, or end tables to add to the room’s function.
Often you’ll want to think about rugs and wall decorations as well as the lighting, which can all radically change the look and feel of the room.
How Do You Fill a Long Living Room?
The difficulty with how to decorate a long living room is organizing the space to feel cozy and warm. We want to avoid feeling like living in a train car.
Here are some tips on how you can decorate things to best use the space:
- Split the room into smaller living areas
One long room can be awkward to decorate, but two regular-sized rooms are less so. By splitting the room into two separate living areas when decorating, you can plan out an office space and a living room, or a dining nook and den combination.
INSPIRATION: One way to do this is to build a small conversational space on the one end - perhaps a loveseat and chair with table, or four chairs with table. On the other end, create your living room area with a couch and television.
You don’t have to separate the two with a wall, but you can simply use rugs or separate decor to differentiate the two sides.
- Less is more
You don’t need to fill the whole space with furniture. Instead, you invite furniture to fill the sides and corners by keeping the center open, using the whole space.
This is especially helpful if a centerpiece is built around, such as a fireplace or window. This feature can be used to tie the sides of the room together.
5 Tips to Make your Long Living Room Look Good
1. Avoid having all furniture along one wall.
If possible, don’t place all the furniture along one wall in your long living room layout.
This will make the narrowness of the room stand out. Instead, alternate the seating arrangements into separate groups facing opposite directions. Not only will this break up the eye line in a pleasing way, but it will create a curved traffic flow.
2. Place more furniture width-wise.
By creating horizontal cross-sections in the space, the eye will have a tougher time seeing the room as one long hallway.
Be careful to keep the area open and flowing, but use those walls at each end to stretch the width of the space with horizontally placed furniture such as bookshelves.
3. Get a corner sofa.
A corner sofa can use the space of the width naturally, emphasizing flow. It is a great piece to fit into the other advice given.
4. Use circular and curved pieces.
By adding curved lines to the space, you allow the eye to move around and break up the monotony of straight lines that can lead one down the length of the room.
It’s a way to create organic paths for the eye to follow that flow throughout the room, rather than only down it.
5. Move furniture away from the walls.
Finally, you can pull the furniture away from the walls to fill the small without emphasizing its length.
Try to break up the ‘areas’ of furniture so that the perspective of one long hallway is split into smaller areas.
Make Your Living Room Look Bigger and Brighter
- Go for very bright or very dark colors.
Medium colors shrink a room, whereas bold colors expand it.
- Use hidden storage.
By cleaning up clutter and putting storage away in appropriate spots, you can maximize the living space.
- Use larger-scale items.
By placing a few large-scale decorations or wall hangings, you emphasize the entire space. Too many smaller items clutter the space.
- Place multiple lights instead of one centerpiece.
Different levels and types of light expand the feel of the space.
- Use furniture with exposed legs.
These open the room more by keeping the floor space visible.
- Place mirrors in areas with less light exposure.
They can catch the light from other areas and brighten the space.
- Emphasize levels and vertical space.
If you don’t have enough horizontal space, you can always add items on different levels and bring the eye up with floor-to-ceiling items such as drapes or paneling.
How Do I Furnish a Long Wall in My Living Room?
There are a few thoughts on how to decorate a long living room wall.
- Use mirrors to increase the width.
By placing mirrors on the longer wall, you expand the size of the width of the room.
- Use one or two big pieces of art.
By using one or two large pieces of art instead of many smaller pieces, the eye centers on each piece. Conversely, a collection of smaller pieces draws the eye from one to the next, emphasizing the length again.
- Follow the ‘S’ shape.
If you followed some of our room decoration advice, you can follow the ‘S’ shape of the design so that the long wall has a TV or bookshelf on one side and space for a mirror or art on the other. By breaking it up into two or three areas in this way, the length is interrupted.
- Keep the long wall bright.
By having the long wall brighter than the ends, the area will expand in width rather than length. Windows help with this, but light paint or brighter paintings can also do the trick.
Summary
Furnishing a long living room layout is not as hard as you might think. But, there are a few tips that help differentiate it from a regular living room.
First, look to split the room into two separate areas and create an S-shaped walkthrough. Next, use furniture and wall decor to emphasize the width of the room, including putting furniture width-wise.
Finally, break up anything that would cause the room to look like one hallway, including all the furniture along one wall.
With the information in this guide, hopefully you’ll find it easier to decorate your long living room. For this reason, be sure to check back here if you have any questions!