How to decorate a small living room

See Your Place Founder Jo Lane was recently invited to contribute to a feature in Ideal Home magazine on how to decorate a small living room, and share her top tips and styling recommendations, as well as what to avoid doing.

What design mistakes should you avoid in a small living room?

A feature wall! For example a single statement wallpapered wall, or a large picture gallery wall. This will overwhelm a small space with too much busyness, and make it feel instantly smaller. Instead, keep all your walls the same colour, even taking it on to your ceiling for an extra cocooning colour-drenched effect.

I would also stay away from using large scale patterns when considering how to decorate a small living room. These can be a too visually jarring in a more compact space – particularly in a living room, where you want to be able to relax. You can add interest by using smaller patterns and introducing plenty of texture, to create a calm haven.

Also, I would avoid using furniture that is just too small to be practical. When decorating a small living room, your natural inclination might be to scale everything down for fear of cluttering up a small space. For example, using a small rug, a small coffee table, and an overly small (usually uncomfortable!) sofa.

But rather than create a room that’s perfectly in proportion, this will actually make your smaller living room feel a bit like a doll’s house – with furniture that’s too small and impractical for comfortable use.

In fact, a few well-chosen generously sized pieces in a smaller space actually ‘normalise’ it, making it feel luxurious and inviting, rather than overfilled.

What furniture to choose to make the most of your small living room?

I would start with a large rug as a foundational piece.  Using a larger rug in a smaller living room has the reverse effect of making your space feel bigger, as it pushes out the edges of your room and tricks the eye into perceiving the space to be larger than it is. Ideally your rug should sit under as much of your seating as possible, so that there are no gaps between furniture and rug. It’s also a good idea to choose a rug that has a more subtle pattern / colour, to increase the sense of space in a smaller room.

I would then choose a 2 seater sofa with a narrower profile, i.e. with sightly more upright arms and back. This is a great space-saving trick as the overall footprint will be more compact, whilst giving you the same usable seating area. But make sure it is still generously filled and deep enough to snuggle into, so that you don’t need to compromise on comfort. The Jude model from Sofa.com is a great example.

I would also use a centrally placed footstool to anchor your room, doubling up as an occasional coffee table by using a tray on top when needed, giving you two functions in one piece. To get the proportions right choose one that is roughly half the length of your sofa. If space is very tight go for a rectangular shaped footstool that is narrower in depth, but still substantial in length. This will give your living room a focal point, but still allow plenty of space to move around it.

What colour palette should you use in a small living room?

It might be an unpopular opinion, but I feel that white isn’t always the best paint choice for a small living room. People assume that white will automatically make a room feel bigger, but I think it depends on the type of light your room gets. A very bright white in a small north-facing living room will make it feel cold and unwelcoming, a bit prison-cell like (although white in an already light room, with plenty of colour in your furniture and accessory choices can work beautifully).

If you want to keep things light but warm, I would suggest instead a light warm neutral, like Farrow & Ball’s Skimming Stone, or Paint & Paper Library’s Paper III, to brighten a small space but keep it soft.

Finally, I think using too many colours in a small living room is a design mistake. Instead, keep your palette to no more than 3 core colours ideally, to make it feel cohesive, interesting, and pulled-together, rather than visually chaotic.

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