Making the Most of a Small Living Room

Having use of a comfortable living room is essential in building up quality time within a family. But what do you do if your living room is quite possibly the size of a cardboard box? If your living room is on the smaller side, I feel your pain. I live in New York City, and the stereotype is true, we pay thousands of dollars per month for minimal space. Here are my two top secret tips that I have learned while inhabiting cramped quarters.

Identify Spaces

If you are convinced that your living room is way too small to function, stop. Keep an open mind. There is always more than enough room in every small living room to define spaces. The biggest mistake that you can possibly make with your teeny tiny living room is jumble up several different purposes without providing obvious definition. The eye feeds off of order, it's naturally far more attractive than it's messy counterpart. If you have a television stationed right next to a computer which sits side by side next to a computer which just happens to me next to a craft table, no wonder your living room seems so small! It's a mess! Believe it or not, organizing and defining spaces (no matter how small) in a living room can truly go a long way. And plus, messy and cluttered rooms tend to look much smaller than neat ones.

Color Correction

It may be the oldest trick in the book, but painting a room in a lighter color will almost instantly brighten up a space. To make your living room appear a bit larger and to make the best use of the natural sunlight your room receives during the day, consider painting your room in a white, light yellow, light green or beige color scheme, since these colors tend to grasp natural light the best. To choose a color scheme for the entire room, select a four color swatch of paints that you like and assign two or three to different aspects of your room. For example, you may assign your walls the paint color of emerald green, assign your throw pillows a color of jungle green, assign your decorative bowls, vases and candles the color of Persian green. Doing this will give your living room a much more streamlined appearance while bringing out the natural light and making the space visually interesting. Another great thing to add to small rooms is oversized mirrors. Instead of a large piece of artwork over your couch, add an oversized mirror with a simple frame in a coordinating color to your furniture or finishes. Also, if possible place your couch directly across from the largest window in the room. With the mirror strategically placed above the couch, all the light that goes into the room will be reflected off of the mirror and literally multiply the amount of natural daylight in your small living room.