Contemporary-Style Couch

The neutral palette and minimalist design of the Drake contemporary sofa ($1,999) will make for a sleek seat in any room. The two-tone upholstery is also an elegant way to create visual interest.

Colorful L-Shape Couch

Add color and personality to your living room with the High Life sofa ($3,200). With more than 45 choices, it’s easy to find a fabric that will fit into your home.

Sleek Futon/Sleeper Sofa
Instead of a clunky, old-fashioned sleeper sofa, consider this sleeker model from Spacify. The Metropolitan sofa bed ($1,066) has two adjustable back cushions that move easily from sitting to lounging to sleeping, all while maintaining a sophisticated look.

Cottage-Style Sofa

With its cool blue ticking stripe cushions, Lee’s 5656 sectional ($5,905) is just the sort of seating you need to make your living room shipshape.

Sofa with Distinctive Shape

The curvy design of the Demi sofa ($649) will add a swanky touch to your living room. The sculpted arms and classic wooden legs blend perfectly with the overall contemporary style.

Settee with Curves

The curved lines of the Matcha settee ($1,320) will add feminine flair to your living room. The sofa is available in a variety of fabrics to match any palette.

Stylish Bench

Fabulous in a variety of finishes (shown here in amber tortoise), the Moderne Maru bench ($950) meshes with any style.

Striped Upholstered Bench

The Bel-Air bench ($4,126) in Panache Bark Stripe will add Hollywood style to any room. The U-shape bench is the perfect blend of comfort and glamour.

Asymmetrical Chaise Longue

The Acquisitions chaise A6707 ($3,675) provides luxurious elegance with asymmetrical flair.

Sofa with Urban Refinement
The Central Park sofa ($1,800) captures an urban look with a hint of Art Deco style.

1. Accessorize with Art and Collections

Living room walls come alive when you use them to display art or collections that you love. Group items for impact, and hang them low enough to relate to nearby furnishings or architecture. The most common mistake in hanging pictures is putting them too high.

This grouping of four large prints hangs low enough to connect visually to the sofa. The painting on the adjacent wall hangs at standing eye level and relates to the lamp in the corner.

2. Design a Media Center

If your living room is also your family room, watching TV may be the main use of the room. Whether you have the newest model or an older one, incorporate it into the room’s design so that it’s a feature but not dominant.

In this living room, the fireplace was designed to accommodate a cabinet for the television above. When it’s time to watch TV, the doors open and tuck back into the cabinet.

3. Dress the Windows–or Not

Although heavy window treatments are mostly a thing of the past, living rooms are the place for elaboration and luxury if you’re so inclined. This combination of relaxed shades and floor-to-ceiling draperies is understated yet elegant.

The elegance comes from the generous use of fabric in the draperies–they’re not fancy, but the thick folds and puddling ends communicate luxury. The shades block light and provide privacy when desired.

4. Plan for Inviting Lighting

Lighting in the living room should be geared toward creating a relaxed, comfortable mood. Aim for layers of light, and position light sources so they form roughly a triangle to ensure good distribution of illumination.

Table lamps that focus the light down will encourage people to sit down and relax. The overlapping arcs of light illuminate the seating instead of the upper walls, sending the message to sit.

5. Arrange Furniture for Conversation

Living rooms are gathering spaces, so use furniture arrangement to promote conversation and interaction. Pull seating pieces away from the walls and arrange them to face each other.

If you have a large living room, break it into two conversational groups for a more comfortable, intimate feeling. Chairs and ottomans that can be pulled into the group as needed allow you to expand the circle and still keep the intimacy.

6. Create a Focal Point

A focal point anchors the living room and helps draw you into the space. A fireplace is a natural focal point, symbolizing hearth and home, but in most living spaces, the television is the true center of attention. To keep them from competing, pair them up. A beautiful view or a stunning piece of art can also serve as a room’s focal point.

Here a large French armoire fills the corner beside the fireplace and holds the television. To balance it, a trumeau mirror and a painting hang over the fireplace.

7. Choose Stylish, Comfortable Flooring

In keeping with the function of the living room as a public space, choose a floor covering that provides comfort underfoot and makes a design statement as well. This vibrant wall-to-wall carpet lays the foundation for a refined mix of florals and stripes.

If you prefer a less bold floor, choose a solid neutral flooring that allows attention to focus on furniture or art. Hardwood floors with area rugs are one of the most popular choices for living room floors, but ceramic tile, stone tile, and full carpeting work too.

8. Add Character with Architectural Trimwork

Trimwork serves practical purposes, covering the seams where floors and ceilings meet walls and supporting the structure around openings. But these elements serve aesthetic purposes too. The style of trimwork helps give your home a distinctive look, whether classical, contemporary, old-world, or regional.

Projecting lintels over the door and windows, a deep cornice, and a paneled and beamed vaulted ceiling combine to give this white-washed living room a sense of place.

9. Finish the Walls and Ceilings

Traditionally, living room walls receive more elaborate or formal treatment than other rooms because the room is a public space. To make it a welcoming room that expresses your personality, choose wallcoverings or treatments that reflect your style.

The walls in this room are upholstered with linen and stenciled with white fabric paint. The effect brings warmth and texture to the walls and gives them a look of antiquity.

10. Set the Mood with Color

The colors you choose for your living room will affect how guests feel in the space. Colors can energize or relax the space, depending on how intense they are and how warm or cool they are.

A serene scheme of soft blue and white makes this spacious living room feel calm, cool, and collected–a gracious setting for elegant gatherings. A light tan carpet underfoot warms the space and keeps the cool tones in balance.

Eggplant, Moss, and Red

A bold scheme of eggplant purple, moss green, and red springs up from the custom-designed rug. The walls and ceiling are stark white, focusing attention on the furnishings and accessories.

While this threesome doesn’t match a prescribed color wheel scheme, it is satisfying because green and red are complements, intensifying each other, and purple and red are related hues. Combining them with lighter shades of the same colors produces a living room that feels lively and contemporary.

Space-Expanding Whites

An all-white scheme makes a small living room feel larger. Dark wood furniture, warm brown floors, and medium tan accessories ground the white scheme and give it richness and warmth.

Warm Neutrals

Inspiration for the living room’s color scheme came from the floral pillows tossed on the sofas. A range of neutrals from oatmeal to cream and taupe covers the walls, windows, and upholstery with quiet color. The result is comfortable yet restrained.

Coral and Brown

A coral orange hue gives this room a decidedly modern look with geometric patterns and color everywhere. Boldly patterned pillows add a bit of daring to the solid brown sofa and chair.

Orange is said to stimulate conversation, so if you like to entertain, an orange living room–even if it’s a softer shade, like this one–could help guarantee lively parties.

Butterscotch, Yellow, and White

Horizontal stripes of wallpaper and vertical stripes on the window treatment frame this living room in butterscotch hues. White trimwork and ceiling and a white band around the top of the walls balance the warm colors.

Red Plus Neutrals

The rich red of the library walls was achieved with a custom glaze over a red base paint. The vivid color is a striking backdrop to the art collection, which adds its own color elements throughout the room.

To keep the room from red-hot intensity, the soft furnishings stay cool with neutral fabrics. A creamy cotton covers the Bridgewater sofa, while armchairs slipcovered in an ivory-ground floral pull the room together with splashes of red.

Mauve, Gold, and Blue

Out of fashion after the Victorian revival of the 1980s, mauve gets a new look with a slightly metallic pink cast and some new partners–a muted yellow gold and a grayed blue. The unexpected combination was inspired by artwork.

Brassy striped curtains, a yellow Nepalese rug, and yellow cushions on the chairs balance the cool pink tones with a dose of warm color.

Citrus Colors Plus White

An exuberant color palette of fruity orange and yellow brings youthful energy to this condo. White furniture breaks up the saturated color palette and stays true to the light, bright scheme. Touches of a chic accent color, in this case apple green on a vase, add visual interest and enforce the dominant color scheme.

Color Blocks

In this midcentury modern ranch house, blocks of color create focal points and help move you through the space. A warm yellow canvas on a deep blue wall in the living room grounds the space, while the red door draws you toward the hall, which is entirely white.

When using color in large blocks, pair warm and cool hues to take advantage of the push-pull effect that results. Warm colors (reds, yellows, oranges) seem to come forward while cool colors (blues, purples, greens) appear to recede.

Navy and White

Navy walls in this living room make it a favorite spot for cozy nighttime television watching. White slipcovers and a light berber carpet keep the dark walls and area rug from making the space too dark.

Maybe it is more suitable to those who are bachelordoms, if they don’t feel lonely. Anyway, people who like it well and live in it must have good taste. You know, something you like could reveal you in some way.

As you open the window, you can see beautiful sea as if you buy a sea view room which not all of us can afford it. And when you raise up your head, you can see blue sky but not ceiling, although actually it is ceiling. You see, they are in fact virtual windows and virtual skylights. But they looks like so real that it can make you believe you live in a sea view room.

Unfortunately us city dwellers usually have to make do with dreary architecture monstrosities that makes us thank the the Lord for curtains and window blinds. SkyFactory’s Virtual Windows and Skylights seem to understand the predicament of modern day living as they re-create nature and all its glory.

Don’t be fooled, these are not just realistic paintings but actually “a digital cinema virtual window that brings the dynamic beauty of nature to interior environments as eScape features a wall-mounted industrial-grade HD LCD monitor embedded in a full-size casement window”.

Look at the first picture, we can guess the master of the house may be artistic for the design of fireplace and the place of two body sculptures. He/She may does’t like being disturbed. The wooden stairs are connected to the second floor, which is a not too bad detail.

I find more and more houses are put a carpet in the living room. There is a theory that carpet in the living room could increase wealth. If you believe it, it may come true. Anyway, it has its actual funtions, including reducing noise and decoration as well.

This kind of living room design is so soft that I think I will always want to sleep if I live in this house. What about you?

Generally, red is not taken to match the green as the two colors are contrast colors. The combination of two will not look harmonious. Do you think this design could be used to deny that opinion?

The design of this living room is a little similar as the second picture, bright and gentle as well, which has great sense of “family”.

With iPhone app “Make Coffee”, you can take your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad as a full working virtual coffee maker which allows you to make stunning coffees anytime and anywhere! Besides, you can share your coffee with your friends on Facebook and get your Hot “Coffee” Dates sending invitation via email! You can enjoy the interest of making coffee just like what you do in the real life. Maybe someday it will come true that the iPhone app could control the real coffee maker wirelessly. What a brilliant idea! And it is not impossible.

I have a direct insertion nightlight that only be used when I go to bed. If it is cord-free doesn’t matter to me. Just plug it into the outlet, so that I will not see nothing in the dark. And that’s all I need from it, maybe so do most of you. Anyhow, you can’t use it for reading because of its failnt light.

That is my opinion. If you like this kind of creative design or the product itself, I still would like to tell you this nightlight is turned on with the button in the bottom. The nightlight I use is similar as the one below, cord-free, and only need one outlet, but not as cute as it. It seems like a baby is embracing something.

Ball Cactus is a plant that is easy to raise. You don’t need to pay much attention on it, but just remember to water it once a month. That’s what the florist told me when I bought the Ball Cactus that is now on my desk. So every month after I get my salary, I’ll come to water it.

Of course Ball Cactus has many other functions. Ball Cactus always breath at night when it is cold and wet. When breathing, it takes in carbon dioxide and breathes out oxygen. So Ball Cactus can also function as a natural oxygen bar. Ball Cactus is also good at absorbing dust. It seems like an air freshener and does a good job.

Back to the words that Ball Cactus represents. When I get to know that, I like it much better. Ball Cactus isn’t as strong as it seems. It just reminds you of the fact like that and tells you to learn to be strong.

This orange color looks very comfortable as well. It is easy for you to convert and integrated ladder makes you conveniently get to the second floor. What a clever brain the designer has!