Fireplaces in a living room are not a common design element. Fireplaces are seen in living room where homes are in a cold climatic environment. That means fireplaces are dependent on the external climatic conditions.

A living room, which has a fireplace, is designed with a slight different design attitude. If you see any photos of living room design with fireplaces you will notice that that the seating arrangement is normally done near or around the fireplace.

This is quite obvious because the persons living in the room must consume the heat coming out of the fireplace. By arranging the seating furniture around the fireplace opening it makes it easier for everyone to enjoy a cup of coffee, chatting, fun time by absorbing the warmth of the heat from the fireplace.

Thus fireplace in a living room becomes a focus and forma a visual frame because of the square seating arrangement. One important point to consider here is that the furniture to watch the TV is the same, which gets arranged around the fireplace. If the living room is small in shape then it is necessary to use lightweight furniture so that you can rearrange it for different activities when not around the fireplace.

Thus living room designs with fireplaces needs a little extra thought because the fireplace adds a new function to the living room. Learn more about living room design by visiting my website.

If you have decided to design your living room with the modern or contemporary design theme, then I have good news for you. The modern living room designs are the easiest to design amongst all other design themes. This is because the modern interior design theme assumes and follows very basic design principle that is “less is more”.

What does this mean?

In simple words this means that heavy decoration does not necessarily make a space beautiful. By heavy decoration I mean using decorative elements all over the space to make it “more” beautiful is not the key to aesthetically pleasing designs.

The modern interior design theory assumes that simple forms such as square, circle, rectangle, and triangle are themselves so beautiful and hence require no other external prop to enhance their own beauty. That is why in modern living room you will see simple forms used in all design elements.

If you observe closely you may find plain rectangular walls with plain color schemes, furniture with straight lines or curves that flow very smoothly creating a visual harmony, even accessories such as curtains, area rugs mostly have contrasting or plain colors.

All these express nothing but simplicity. That is why modern living room designs are relatively easy to design. In such types of design themes visual balance is the key to everything you do in a living room. Play of light and shadows also play a major role in modern living room designs.

To learn more about living room design and other aspects attached to living room interiors visit my website.

A living room is the first room when anyone enters the home. Due to this it is quite obvious that a living room interior design must be the “signature” of the entire decorating and design theme for the rest of the house.

I have very rarely seen different themes in all rooms of the home. if you prefer a interior design theme with heavy decoration and ornamental qualities then an “oriental interior design theme” is best suited for your home. Whatever theme you choose for the interior design of the living room, you will have to carry it to all other rooms simply to maintain a visual balance and connectivity.

It is quite important to note that a living room in a home is the focal point of the home. Entrances to all other rooms go through the living room. This is especially true with small apartment units where space is a scarcity. This makes the status of a living room very important from interior design point of view.

That is why deciding theme of the living room interior design will greatly affect the final outcome of your entire home picture. Another important point to be noted is that it’s your home and only you can tell what is best for you and what are your likes and dislikes.

While deciding interior design ideas for living room always have a look at your special interests. For example some people like traveling and have a collections of lots of books/photos/antique pieces/collectibles, which they have collected from, all over the world. You can use this as a decorating theme for your living room so that your living room interior design reflects “who you are” and your special interests.

It’s no point copying designs of some other person and calling it your own. It is good to take inspiration from others but always have your own design touch while decorating your own home and specifically your living room.

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Before we go into the details of apartment living room design, let’s first have a look at what exactly is an “apartment”. An apartment is a building type where more than one housing unit has been arranged in such a way that all the units get a benefit of all the building services equally.

For example all the housing units share a staircase block, lifts, overhead and underground water tank. This saves the cost of construction and the biggest advantage is saving in land area, which is scarce now days in big cities. That is why you find more apartment blocks in big metro cities. The main purpose behind designing and constructing an apartment is to get same or equivalent comfort levels of an independent bungalow in leas space and money.
 
But apartments do have certain disadvantages too. The most common disadvantage is smaller rooms. This may not be the case in all apartment blocks but a majority of them do have smaller rooms. While designing interior design for apartment living rooms this pint must be taken into consideration.

Smaller living rooms require a bright color scheme so that the natural light gets deflected into deeper areas and it gives a perception of more space. Also the furniture arrangement and their choice play a vital role in apartment living room design.

It is better to avoid bulky furniture in smaller living rooms. This is because bulky furniture gives a perception of more volume thus creating a perception of more space occupancy. In a smaller living room this can create a impression of crowdedness. Furniture with thin frames and smaller volumes serves best for smaller living rooms. Avoid using dark colors on apartment living rooms. Also other furniture such as TV units or bookshelves can be designed to reveal more of wall areas behind so that the overall visual volume gets easily perceived giving an impression of more space.

The whole interior design style must reflect a kind of openness and inviting nature. Thus apartment living room design is a fun activity and many experiments can be done creatively to create a unique design style.

Visit my website to learn more about living room design styles and various key elements in living room interior design.

Almost every home has a living room. This is the room where your home begins. A living room is responsible for defining the identity of your home. It is the face of your home. All those who visit your home (except family members) never really enter your other rooms, but they will definitely visit your living room because it’s the first room.

While designing a living room it is advisable to pick a design them and follow it. The name “contemporary” is the name of the design theme which a few designers follow to design any room of the home.

In this design theme major emphasis is given on simplicity. Straight lines and simple curves dominate various forms. Heavy decoration is strictly avoided. The real thinking behind this design theme is that simple geometrical forms such as square, rectangle, and circle are they so beautiful, why decorate them further and disturb their visual balance.

That is why contemporary living room design may include a dominance of straight lines in various elements such as flooring patters, furniture, wall finishes, light fixtures, etc. Any heavy decoration, which may include floral prints, plants, and relief work on walls, is strictly avoided. Color schemes are mostly plain with contrasting or even sometimes making a bold statement. Simplicity is the key when it comes to contemporary living room design theme. Because of the more percentage of plain surfaces in contemporary theme, a good use of natural or artificial lighting can be done to add extra visual attention.

Learn more about living room design.

If you are planning to design or even redesign a living room then here is a quick tip that can save lot of time and money. Before you go out and buy stuff for decorating your living room design first decide a “design theme” for your task.

A theme is nothing but a way of looking towards the design. Some of the popular living room design these are

1) Contemporary design theme
2) Country design theme
3) Oriental design theme

Once you are very clear about the design them it becomes mush more easily to choose specific items that will form a part of the final design. For example if you have planned hanging curtains along living room windows, depending upon which “design them” you have opted for, you can easily shortlist a few designs and finalize them by looking at the budget and color scheme.

But the choice becomes mush more difficult if you are not sure about the theme itself. Thus living room (or any other room) design ideas will flow naturally if you break down every aspect into a theme and work on it.

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Chairs provide a very simple yet effective way to relax and spend some good time in a comfortable body posture. But not all chairs are designed to “relax” . This is especially true about chairs in the workplaces. In the workplaces we are supposed to be alert hence the office furniture is designed to be alert at work. They keep your body in a manner which will keep you from relaxing.

But things are different in a living room. the whole and sole purpose of chairs in the living room are to provide better comfort and maximum relaxation. But there is one more important aspect to this situation.

let’s see a small experiment. If you have been given a choice in a living room to watch a good movie and provided with two different types of seating arrangement. First a big stuffed leather sofa and a small chair with fair amount of seating space a person should have, which one would you choose to sit. Of course most people will unconsciously choose to sit on a large sofa and ignore the chair altogether.

Why does this happen? It’s simple a sofa has a much different psychological impact on the human mind because of its sheer volume and form. Because of his a chair in a living room is always considered as a “option” for seating arrangement. If your more friends join the movie viewing with you then you might consider getting a few “chairs” to sit around the TV and fulfill the need of emergency occupancy.

So chairs are always considered a fillers rather than core furniture elements in a living room. But this same principle can be very effectively used, let’s see how.

If you observe the furniture arrangement in any living room you will notice that sofa sets are arranged in living rooms that overlook some object of interest such as a fireplace, TV, outdoor patio, backyard etc. So such kind of arrangement is used to create a focus in the living room. Go right now to http://images.google.com and search for “living room” images. View at least 10 images and you will see that all attention has been focused around this furniture arrangement.

We can easily use this method with chairs as well. An arrangement of chairs in a large living room will definitely be used to balance the attention elsewhere and create another focal point. For example if the exit to patio has been overlooked an arrangement of even 4 chairs with a small coffee table will make the space look more used and
balanced.

In this way chairs do have a lot of “power” in decorating when used in groups and with creative arrangements. I hope this article has shown you the importance of chairs as a design element in living rooms.

Copyright Shrinivas Vaidya
Shrinivas Vaidya is the webmaster of http://www.livingroomdatabase.com Visit today to get more free tips on living room chairs and many other factors that will help you to create a charming and beautiful living room.

If you planning to buy new furniture for your living room, then most probably you have already thought about the furniture layout in your mind or else you have probably thought of repeating the same old layout with only the new furniture pieces. In this article I will show you a simple method to create the most efficient livingroom furniture layout.

Before we begin there are a few points that need to be considered. A living room is always a transition space. This means that entrances to all other rooms are located in living room. Other bedrooms, dining room, kitchen etc. are accessed through living room, that’s why a sufficient “circulation space” for family members is a must.

So here is what you can do to create the most efficient layout for a living room.

1) Take a plane white paper. A4 size is also enough.
2) Draw a sketch plan of your living room on this paper. While drawing this plan it is important to show the following things in it.

*Entrance door
*Entrance doors to other rooms
*Window positions
*Minor column projections (if any)
*Swing of the doors (inside or outside the living room)
*Presence of staircase
*Fireplace (if any)

3) Take a pencil and draw lines starting from entrance door to all other doors and window positions. This is the natural travel lines for any person using the living room. If the room is empty without any livingroom furniture these are the lines any person would follow to reach other point in the living room.

4) Now start placing the furniture units like 3 seat sofa, single/double seat sofa, coffee table, end tables lampshades, bookshelves, TV unit, etc.. Depending upon your budget you can go for any number of these units.

While placing these units it will always be seen that the furniture obstructs the pencil travel lines drawn in the third step. But that’s OK for now. Now make as may combinations and arrangements of the furniture units as possible. Think out of the box while doing this. Try to do something different.

Remember if you try you will easily come up with at lest 10 layout for that same living room. You will be amazed at how many combinations are possible. Also imagine the furniture pieces you already have or can you replace that table in the bedroom with the one in the living room.

How about keeping it vertical rather that horizontal in the plan. Whatever you do keep one thing in mind. Always keep the human ovement “unobstructed”. People passing through the living room in other rooms must be able to pass without cutting vision if you are talking to other person in the living room.

That’s why those pencil lines have been drawn. After you have drawn the furniture pieces on the living room plan, modify the travel lines. Now these lines will be around the furniture, especially at corners. The travel lines will now take the shape of the furniture at the edges.

After this short exercise you will have probably 5 different layouts on paper with. Select the one in which you see the following points of interest.

*Travel line lengths are shortest.
*Travel lines do not pass trough the furniture.

Apart from the efficiency there is another factor called as visual balance while designing a furniture layout. Finally does it look good to YOU. Are you  comfortable with the final layout. The visual balance is achieved by making the most use of all walls of the living room with decorating elements such as paintings, color schemes, etc.

So if you follow a system from the beginning you will be definitely be able to create a beautiful living room in the shortest possible time. I hope this article has helped you to find more creative ways of doing this job more efficiently.

Copyright Shrinivas Vaidya

Shrinivas Vaidya is the webmaster of http://www.livingroomdatabase.com/. Visit today to get more free tips on living room furniture to decorate a beautiful and charming living room of your wildest dreams.

What exactly is a theme? To make things simple let’s put it this way. A theme is nothing but a group of design elements combined together and given a name.

Some of the common theme names we have heard are
1) Contemporary theme
2) Oriental theme
3) Country theme
etc..

So a theme includes elements of decorating that are responsible for a drastic change in any given interior space. What these elements can be? A theme might include colors, finishes, textures, specific shapes to be used, budget restrictions, or even a material of only by a particular manufacturer.

Such a group of design elements when combined together gives birth to a “theme”. It is perfectly possible to add, delete, modify, alter, replace any one or all the elements in this theme. It all depends on what you like/dislike.

For example If I say that a “contemporary design theme” does nor or should not include a specific color for ceiling in the living room, you have total right to modify the above statement and make your own depending upon what you like/dislike. So any design theme is always evolving and you can use “creativity” to give birth to new themes.

But what about the themes that are already existing?

1) Contemporary design theme:

In these type of designs much emphasis is given on “simplicity” and straight lines and forms. this type theme says that a square in it self is a beautiful and “balanced” entity hence most design elements in this theme are simple forms made of straight lines.

Also plain colors with their shades are used to create a “play” of light and shadows.

2) Oriental design theme:

In these type of design majority of surfaces are treated for “relief work” such as textured plasters with heavy decorating, wallpapers, with decorating prints of natural elements such as leaves, flowers, scenery. Surfaces are treated as a way of expression.

3) Country design theme:

In this theme more and more natural elements are used for creating furniture and other elements. that’s why more country houses have wooden furniture, wooden flooring, shutters, ceiling made of wood etc.

So wood is used as a major language of expression.

While selecting theme for your living room it is necessary to first analyze what you like most and the budget criteria. Once this has been defined finding design elements that fits your design theme is relatively easy. But one thing must be kept in mind that a living room is the face of your home. Once you decide or finalize the theme for your living room, it becomes almost necessary to use the same theme for rest of the room.

Of course this is not an absolute rule ,but keeping a common theme for your entire home helps to maintain a visual balance.

I hope this article was helpful to everyone.

Copyright Shrinivas Vaidya
Shrinivas Vaidya is the webmaster of http://www.livingroomdatabase.com Visit today to get more free living room decorating tips to decorate a beautiful and charming living room of your wildest dreams.

Living room is a place in the home, which has got a very special importance as far as planning is concerned. If a schematic plan of the home is drawn it can be easily concluded that in almost every home plan the living room has got maximum area in unit squares.

This itself is an indication that the living room is a space that needs some good attention during the entire home decorating project. Let’s try to note down some essentials of a good and successful living room design.

1) Clear Circulation Space

In any home plan whether it is an apartment block or an independent bungalow a person either enters an “entrance lobby” or directly in the living room (if space is an issue). From this living room entrances open to all other spaces namely kitchen, bedrooms, staircases if any, patios, study rooms, family rooms etc..

That’s why while designing a furniture layout it must be kept in mind that the circulation is unobstructed. this can be easily achieved by creating a sample furniture layout on paper first and then the furniture arranged thereafter.

2) Visual Balance

Create a good visual balance between the used and unused spaces. By used space I mean the floor that has been occupied by the furniture pieces. It is not necessary to fill every corner of the living room with some furniture element. But as mentioned above a bare minimum circulation space is a must.

The most common furniture element in a living room a sofa. Creative use of different types of sofas can be made to create a visual balance. Sofas come in a variety of sizes and dimensions. To find out the most common furniture dimensions visit:
http://livingroomdatabase.com/living-room-sofa.htm

Since the main entrance of the entire home is only through the living room (most of the times) allow buffer space to carry the other heavy furniture pieces that are to be placed in the bedrooms such as double beds, wardrobes etc. All these object need to carried through the living room and installed in the bedroom. So think for your entire home, not just the living room.

3) Future Emergency Occupancy

Think about what will happen if you throw a party at your place. All your friends/relatives/colleagues will gather in the living room. So plan for this extra occupancy. What will you do in such situations for seating. Will you move your dining chairs in the living or will people stand or even sit on the ground. Whatever your decision plan for future.

4) Ventilation

If the living room is considerably large, than in most cases it also has a higher ceiling. This is very perfect for the proportions of the space. So think about ventilating this space naturally and artificially as well. If you are going to use fans then will these be hung from the ceiling or be wall mounted.

5) Warm and Welcoming Color Scheme

As a general rule always keep your living room charming using bright color scheme, that has a welcoming attitude. As mentioned above the living room is the first space you will see when you enter you home, so make it a point to use inspiring colors of your choice to add a touch of beauty.

Use of indoor flowering plants around the window bottom is also a great way to add some extra interest in the living room.

In this article I have tried to throw some light upon the living room design ideas, I hope this helps as a starting point for you to think more creatively to decorate your living room.

Copyright Shrinivas Vaidya

Shrinivas Vaidya is the webmaster of http://www.livingroomdatabase.com. Visit today to get more free living room design tips to decorate a beautiful and charming living room of your wildest dreams.