What makes a room with a sofa a living room is f it lives up to its name, if it is a space for living. So when decorating your living room, make sure to put life into it — your life, and the people you share your home with.
Flavor it with signs of your life. Well-placed and well-chosen photographs, for example, achieve this marvelously, because photographs put your character and your experiences in the space. And that adds so much warmth to the place. Don’t limit yourself to just pictures either. Put in your favorite things — interesting and quirky souvenirs from your travels, and selected mementos from your personal milestones. Or perhaps you like to collect certain things — stamps, crystals, Star Trek figurines? These objects put your own personal stamp on the room so much more than something that you bought from the store just because it’s trendy. Meaning is key, choose objects that mean something.
Decorate it around your life so that you’d really want to do some living there. Make it a space you and your family members would like to come home to and hang out in. See that it is conducive to nurturing relationships among family members and among friends. Make it a place where your guests can feel at ease and at home in, for when you want to do some entertaining. Choose furniture that’s comfortable as well as pretty; pick colors that are non-headache-inducing; install lighting that makes you feel good (and look good).
Also, bring in objects that let you do things that you like. Keep them within reach. If you like knitting, then bring in a basket of yarn. If you play a musical instrument, make space for your piano, marimba, or guitar, or whatever it is that you play. Just look around and think about which of your hobbies you can indulge in there. Always remember that it’s your space and your life.
Do up your living room so that it’s reflective of the life that you have and the memories you’ve lived. After all, what makes a living room a living room is not the couch, not the lighting, not the walls, and not windows, nor all the smaller details, but how all the elements come together organically, harmoniously, to reflect the amount of living that goes on there.