After your kitchen, your living room or lounge is probably one of the most used spaces in your home. If the room has been neglected for a few years and is now dated in its decor, you may be thinking it’s time for a much-needed refresh.
In this article, we share 58 contemporary living room design ideas to pique your inspiration, from sharp monochromatic looks to cosy interiors, we’re sure there will be something for you.
We take a look at:
- Colour choices
- Decor decisions
- Feature pieces
Topics
Living Room Designs
1 – Make a Statement With a Gallery Wall
One of the simplest – and cost-effective – ways to transform your living room is by installing a gallery wall above your seating area. Unlike buying a brand new sofa set each time you want to refresh the look of your room, this way you can simply slip new prints in and out of existing frames, creating an infinitely beneficial design element to your living space.
Switching out cushion covers and throws to tie in with your chosen prints can help a look become cohesive, giving a sense of a completely different space with minimal effort.
2 – Go Bold With Richly-Coloured Tones
If you’re feeling adventurous and daring, then opting for a bold wash of colour in your living room can make a design statement. Mixing tonal metals with your chosen shade can help to elevate a space, giving a sense of luxury – especially when rich tones such as deep greens, blues or reds are paired with gold accents.
While it’s not necessary to pair your furniture with the exact wall shade, you may wish to if you’re sure of your choice and want to make an even louder statement.
3 – Make the Most of Minimalism
Minimalism often gets a bad reputation for being soulless and empty of feeling – but it doesn’t have to be that way. By adding clever touches with soft furnishings such as thickly piled rugs and cushions, you can soften the edges of an, otherwise empty, space.
What’s more, you can play with textures on lesser-experimented features in your room, such as your lighting. In the example above, draped strings have been used to great effect to create a diffused light that softens the living space and adds much-needed depth and warmth.
4 – Experiment With Quirky Wall Storage
Storage solutions don’t have to be simple shelving units with concealed cupboards – in the above example, we can see how an unusually-designed shelving unit has been used to great effect in this modern living space.
Playing with geometry is a way to keep the eye active within a space, drawing the eye line up or down depending on what you feature on the shelves. Here, the colour scheme of richly-toned oranges and browns has been carried through to the design of the shelving unit, which creates cohesion in the space and helps the shelving unit make sense within the space.
5 – Embrace the Height of Your Ceilings
For those homeowners lucky enough to have an excess of vertical space to play with in their main living area, it makes sense to keep the eye drawn upwards with unusual lighting focal points.
While the ground may be quite bare and minimal, the homeowner has been sure to bring in the drama with an interesting light fitting, acting almost as a sphere of bubbles suspended above the main seating area.
6 – Make a Cosy Nook
Open plan living spaces can sometimes feel too expansive, and homeowners can find it hard to create a sense of cosiness and comfort as a result. Angling furniture inwards can give an effect of relaxation, closing off the larger open-plan space to create a smaller, contained seating area.
Keeping things centralised with a fireplace or television as a focal point can help to draw the eye line inside the seating nook, adding to the feeling of privacy within a larger area.
7 – Centre Furniture on a Focal Point
In homes where the television isn’t the main attraction, other features can be focused on as the central point.
In the living room example above, the home has chosen to direct the furniture to the fireplace, with complimentary wooden features surrounding the space to tie in the look and feel of the element.
8 – Introduce Natural Elements to Modern Spaces
Living rooms that rely on a modern, sleek aesthetic can benefit from the addition of some natural features to balance the cooler tones of the space with some warmer hues – such as wooden logs for your fire (even if they are just ornamental!)
House plants are also a good addition to a more contemporary space, as they effortlessly bring colour and homeliness.
9 – Splash an Unexpected Pop of Colour
While the entire colour wheel can feel overwhelming, you can make accent colour selections easier on yourself by picking one shade and running with it for your living space.
By keeping the rest of your space relatively neutral and monochrome, you can effectively add in any colour you want – the key to making it look cohesive and purposeful is to make sure the shade is replicated over a few different items, such as cushions, throws, and rugs.
10 – Welcome In Whimsy With Throws and Blankets
There’s nothing better on a cold, wet day than cosying up with a warm blanket or three – and this living room example has that in spades.
Combining a soft, textured rug with different throws, blankets and cushions can create a cosy sanctuary, perfect for curling up with a good book or a film.
11 – Add an Unexpected Twist to Your Wall Lighting
There are no rules to how you mount your wall lights – and with good reason – because with no restrictions, unexpected designs are born. In this example, the homeowner has made use of the wall panelling and extended the look further with angled contrast sections on which to mount the wall lights.
This darker tone brings depth to the room, toning in with soft furnishing features such as cushions, curtains and lampshades, giving an opulent feel.
12 – Create Contrast With Bold Urban Elements
If you are fortunate to have large, unobstructed windows in your living room, you can contrast the natural view with some urban indoor elements, like in the example above.
Outdoors, the rows of trees and bushes are met with a bold black and white zigzag rug, together with a black brick chimney breast, while the windows themselves are edged with black trim to frame the view of the outside.
13 – Achieve Industrial Chic With Exposed Brick
The industrial look is having a moment in interior design – and with good reason. Bringing earthy, rustic tones inside can give the effect of a truly relaxing space, with warming brown, tan and orange hues.
Upcycling items such as crates or spare tabletops and pairing them together can create unusual centrepieces, with the benefit of being completely bespoke to you and your home. Tying in the whole ensemble with an exposed brick wall helps to balance the space out and make it cohesive.
14 – Pair Clean, White Walls With Mismatched Furniture
White walls are the new magnolia – and they make styling your living room so simple. With an essentially blank canvas on your walls, you can match anything to it, as there’s not one shade that doesn’t match white.
With this in mind, you can go wild in your space and bring in mismatched furniture or artwork to liven up the space and add your own stamp of personality. Mixing opposing textures, such as leather and wood, or silk and textured cotton can add interest while setting deeper tones of brown next to softer greens can bring in dimension.
15 – Make a Bold Statement With Unusual Shelving
Your shelves don’t have to be uniformly straight and regimented on your walls – and, as shown in the example above, the possibilities for shelf design are practically endless. In this example, the homeowner has leant on their sharp-edged geometric theme and carried the design up and onto the walls to create a set of unusual, bespoke shelves.
Experimenting with height and layering is important on shelves like these, and you can add in books of different shapes and sizes, as well as ornaments and plants to give life to the wall, almost as if it were a piece of installation art. Matching the look with a barely-there standing lamp completes the look.
16 – Carry Your Colour Scheme Onto Your Walls
You may already have some bold soft furnishings that you want to include in your living room’s design, but you might think that they don’t match anything else and stick out for all the wrong reasons. An easy way to incorporate them back into your design is to simply look at what else you can swap in your space to tone them in a little better – and in the case of the example here, we can see that the homeowner has used matching wall prints to give a sense of cohesion to the look.
Replacing prints can be an affordable way of breathing new life into your space, so it’s worth having a look to see if there are any suitable options available to you.
17 – Go Bold With a Quirky Feature Wall
On the other end of the spectrum, if you really want to go all out on your living room look then creating a quirky feature wall is a surefire way of making a lasting and bold statement. Mixing bright colours with daring shapes, you can quickly and easily create something altogether unexpected by hanging empty frames at jaunty angles to make up a feature wall.
With a look like this, tying it in with the whole room is important so that it doesn’t look out of place. Adding in brightly coloured soft furnishings like cushions, throws and rugs can help to pin the look together while keeping other items of furniture fuss-free and will make sure the eye isn’t battling for something to focus on.
18 – Embrace Modern Silhouettes
Incorporating modern shapes and silhouettes into your living space can breathe new life into tired, unloved areas. With a simple and monochromatic colour scheme, you can bring in different textures, yet keep a cohesive result with the matching colour palette.
And, if you have high ceilings and want to bring in a cosy feeling, wiring in some low-hanging lights can be just the trick. Pairing them with dimmable bulbs can create a warming ambience come nightfall.
19 – Match Industrial Furniture With Rich, Golden Tones
A great way of warming up industrial-styled furniture is to mix the pieces with golden metal tones, from bronze through to gold, to save the space from becoming too stark. In this example, the accessories do all the talking, with the main pieces of furniture blending into the background which helps the homeowner to achieve a sense of balance.
Loudly-printed rugs and wall prints can be paired with quieter elements such as plain sofas and armchairs, while the industrial coffee table employs a lot of open space through its wiring, creating a sense of continuation, rather than being obstructive.
20 – Pair Warm-Toned Wood With Statement Pieces
For the ultimate continuation, having your walls match your flooring can create an unbroken sightline for the eye to follow, giving a sense of spaciousness. In spaces like these, it’s important to make sure that your furniture and other accessories complement the canvas instead of looking incongruous.
Here, the homeowner has used black accents to add depth and grounding features to the wall, in the shape of the television, speakers and shelving units. These then match with the coffee table and side chairs, but contrast with the bright white sofa which is needed to give a little light to the space so that it doesn’t feel too closed in and dark.
21 – Create Unusual Centrepieces With Unexpected Fireplace Settings
While fireplaces might be commonly seen in the centre of a living room on a traditional chimney breast, you can subvert the rules and place them in less conventional places, too – such as the corner of a room, as in this example!
Helping with room layout in open-plan spaces, placing a feature like this can help to create a focal point in the room, or one to direct furniture which can help to break up spaces and give them clear purposes.
22 – Keep the Theme Running
In smaller flats or apartment buildings where open-plan living is by design, it’s important to consider the room as a whole as that’s how it will be viewed. Keeping the furniture simple and fuss-free is essential to make sure the space doesn’t feel cluttered.
Matching your dining set to your sofa set is a great way of creating cohesion between the two spaces, helping them to feel like they have different purposes but keeping their colour palettes the same so that there’s a clear sense of togetherness.
23 – Add Tropical and Animal Prints
Sometimes more is more – and while we’re often told not to mix prints or patterns, it can be done to great effect. Here, a boldly-coloured sofa is mixed with cow and zebra print, as well as an assortment of plants of different heights, textures and colours. The result is a space that’s brimming with personality and character.
While this might not be to everyone’s taste, you can truly embrace an outdoors-indoors look and feel by employing some of these simple tactics.
24. Embrace Sleek Simplicity
In direct contrast to our previous example, you can also choose to take things back to basics and embrace a sleek simplicity in your living room’s design. Keeping a tonal, monochromatic colour palette and including just the essential pieces of furniture helps to achieve an airy, open space.
To increase the light in the room, opting for sheer privacy curtains over thicker fabrics or rigid blinds can help to continue the feeling of lightness, too.
25 – Tone in Open-Plan Spaces
Simply matching chair legs with the same tone of wood in both your living space and your dining area can bring cohesion to an open-plan space. In this example, the room is swathed in natural light which is enhanced further by the choice of lightly-coloured furniture and features.
With the only accent colours present being green and pale pink, the homeowner has brought a soft edge to the room, making things feel less stark and more welcoming in one fell swoop.
26 – Accent Neutral Colour Palettes With Natural Features
A grey, monochromatic colour scheme can quickly become cold and unwelcoming if it’s not paired with some softer features (and we’re not just mentioning the dogs, here!) Bringing in some more naturally-coloured features, such as plants, foliage and flowers can give a more gentle feeling, softening harsh edges and colours.
Simple additions such as rugs to cover up hard wooden floors and throws or blankets to accompany people while they sit on the sofa are all welcome accessories to give a homey atmosphere.
27 – Bring the Outdoors Inside
In living spaces with floor to ceiling windows, looking out onto swathes of trees and wildlife, it feels necessary to bring some of that outdoor charm inside with potted plants. In this example, the homeowner has created a simple floating shelving unit that is solely home to plants in neutrally-coloured pots, binding the window’s view with the interior of the house.
Soft tones of wood have been used on the flooring and furniture to further embrace the natural environment, giving a sympathetic and cohesive indoor space.
28 – Be Bold With Accent Colours
While we’ve covered being bold with prints and patterns, we haven’t yet looked at accent colours and their power. Mixing deep, rich tones like oranges and reds with darker woods can create a warm depth in your living room, which is at once inviting and cosy.
Black-edged frames are picked out on the walls with the two-tone wooden chair being dipped in both orange and black to tie in the whole ensemble, with orange and black stacking side tables being put to good use in the centre of the space. Finally, some natural green is spliced in between, with trailing plants leading the eye around the room.
29 – Experiment With Textures and Prints
It’s your home, so you can choose to be as bold and unexpected as you like with your design choices, and if that means adding fun prints and textures in textiles that light your fire, then feel free to do so. In this room, paint has been used cleverly on the walls to add dimension with strips of darker colour leading down towards the ground, while prints have been both hung and leant against the wall for added personality.
A fun rug full of colour and texture completes the space, threading the accessories, furniture and wall colour together.
30 – Keep It Quirky
A cushion doesn’t just need to be ‘cushion-shaped’ – it can be whatever you want it to be! In this living room example, the homeowner has picked out quirky shapes and textures to tell a story about their personality, from a cactus to a bundle of rope shaped into a sphere.
Tucked into the corner is a children’s play area, giving the space a dual purpose, while the floor to ceiling windows let in that all-important daylight to brighten up anyone’s mood.
31 – Embrace Luxury With Wall Panelling
Using panelling on your walls may seem like a dated idea, with homeowners in the past wanting to rid their spaces of these clunky features to allow for easier painting and decorating. However, panelling doesn’t need to be associated with older properties – it can be put to good use in modern living rooms, too.
In this inspirational shot, the homeowner has picked out a simple shape on the walls to add dimension and interest to what would otherwise be a plain wash of colour. Then, an empty gold picture frame has been hung to the side to match the style of the panels and to tie in the other gold accessories.
32 – Try a Pop of Colour Out for Size
While we’ve seen a lot of white or neutrally-coloured sofas so far, that doesn’t mean they’re the only option. Opting for something bright and bold can be a time-consuming endeavour as you want to make sure it’s not entirely trend-led and will be a good investment, but the results are always worth the extra effort.
Here, a millennial pink sofa is set in the middle of the living space, with a bold checkerboard flooring underneath that screams character. A simple barely-there coffee table completes the room, with lots of open space to let the design features speak for themselves.
33 – Tie In Rustic Furniture With Neutral Colour Palettes
Here’s another example of upcycling done right, this time featuring a crate on wheels that has been repurposed as a coffee table. Perfect for homeowners who want to be more environmentally friendly and use existing structures in alternative ways, this table has been thoughtfully paired with a rustic-looking sofa with a long-lasting, durable fabric that captures the essence of the room perfectly.
34 – Elevate Your Living Space Lighting
When re-decorating your living space, it can be hard to decide where you want your key feature to be – or even what that key feature will be! While most homes are fitted with simple hanging bulbs when first completed, you may want to step up your lighting game and add something a little more stylish.
The opulent backdrop of a dark wall with panelling is matched with a funky light fitting, brought down from the ceiling, to help to bring in a cosy atmosphere when the lights are low.
35 – Update Traditional Fireplaces With a Splash of Colour
While having exposed brickwork is a style some like in their homes, others might not like the red and orange tones in their home, wanting to go for something lighter and brighter instead. Rather than ripping out or covering up traditional features, you can simply paint over the brickwork in a shade of your choice to breathe fresh life into your fireplace, like the example here.
Lighter tones of furniture are then placed around the centrepiece to tie everything together, using light greys, tans and off-whites to make the room feel fresh and updated.
36 – Mix Bold With Simple
It might be intimidating at first to think about adding large pieces of artwork to your living space, but there are some simple ways you can navigate that feeling – and one is to simply pair them with a neutral, pared-back colour scheme.
This way, the eye isn’t darting around the room for something to focus on, but instead, the artwork and the furniture work together in harmony.
37 – Carry Design Elements Throughout to Add Spaciousness
In open-plan living and dining spaces, it can sometimes feel tricky to distinguish the cooking space from the relaxing space. While the same lighting elements have been used throughout the space, there is a sense of separation and purpose in the different spaces, with a light shining down onto an armchair, perfect for a cosy afternoon of reading.
Using the same shade of wood in both your kitchen finishes and in your living space can create cohesion, which works well in this example. To make the room feel cosier, adding a large rug to the living space would work well to soften the edges and add another texture.
38 – Add Structured Furniture to Balance Out Spaces
Having statement features in your room from the beginning may make it feel like anything else you put in that space will only be competing for attention, but it’s not the case. Here, large, structured pieces of furniture have been added to the living room in different colours, tones and textures, each having a sense of belonging and purpose.
The important rule to follow here is colour matching – with a floor as imposing as this, you want to lean into the style rather than try to hide it under a rug or with incongruous furniture.
39 – Introduce Unexpected Features to Simply Styled Living Spaces
This living room may look simple, with bare walls and floors and a single-toned sofa, but it’s far from it. Employing the use of vertical height, the homeowner has installed an unexpected light fitting that cascades down from the ceiling and into the centre of the space, giving a sophisticated edge to the space while in keeping with the overall look and feel of the home.
40 – Make Use of Mesh Curtains for Privacy and Softness
Mesh curtains are another great way of adding privacy while not compromising any of the natural light your home gets. For those living on ground floors, or with pavements right by their windows, homeowners may want to opt for some mesh curtains to add a bit of distance between themselves and passers-by.
The curtains also help to soften a room, so work well with harsher items of furniture such as heavy wood or thick curtains.
41 – Keep Sympathetic Colours Present in Remodels
If you are looking at a house remodel, or have recently purchased a newly-renovated home, it’s a nice idea to keep some sympathetic features present where possible, such as the hearth or mantle of the fire, or the original floorboards. In this example, the orange hue of the door, flooring and bannisters have been captured in the autumnal leaves on the centre table, which helps to bring everything together.
42 – Keep Sympathetic Colours Present in Remodels
It’s important not to be too overwhelming in smaller spaces so as not to make them feel even smaller. In areas like these, it’s good to introduce sharp pops of colour alongside neutral tones, such as bright yellow against a more muted grey.
This can be changed out to suit your mood or the season, and keeping things fresh with some matching flowers can help to bring a sense of synchronicity to a space.
43 – Stamp Your Mark With Map Prints
A great way of adding personality and charm to a living space is to have thoughtful prints on the walls. A popular choice right now is to include geographical map prints of areas that are special to you, such as where you got married or a memory of a particularly good holiday.
These prints can then become timeless pieces and can be easily interchanged around the home to add a bit of sparkle wherever you need it.
44 – Keep Things Simple in Narrow Living Spaces
For homeowners with narrow living spaces, space efficiency is a must. Having mobile furniture is a great bonus, as items can be tucked away when not in use or when you need a little more floor space, but then opened out when in use.
Bulky furniture is best avoided in narrow spaces like these, so it’s better to opt for thinner variations like this TV shelving unit which takes up hardly any room but still does the job.
45 – Ground Larger Spaces With Soft Furnishings and Rugs
Large living spaces can be both a blessing and a curse. With so much space comes the need to fill, but more ‘stuff’ isn’t always the answer.
Simply choosing to fill the floor with a large rug can help to ground the space, and even section off larger rooms, keeping things localised. With a slight overlap of the rug and the sofa, your space can feel much more cohesive and cosy, leaving the rest of the space for whatever you want.
46 – Embrace One Colour Whole-Heartedly
While we’ve seen the power of the feature wall, we haven’t seen the power of an entire room painted in a daring, bold shade – until now. This homeowner has chosen green and run with it, adding in tonal sofa, cushion, footrest and plant features to maximise the hue’s impact.
Adding in some pops of gold help to balance the space and brighten things up, giving a touch of warmth, too.
47 – Incorporate Inventive Lighting
There’s no reason your lighting solutions at home have to be standard, run of the mill designs. If you’re wanting to make a real impact, embedding sunken lighting into 3D wall staging can give unexpected depth and dimension to a room, while being infinitely versatile when it comes to mood lighting at night.
Keeping things simple elsewhere with a plain sofa and accessories helps to keep your focus on the main event.
48 – Try Out a Dividing Indoor Window
If you want to enhance the feeling of space within your home, adding an interior window to another room is a great way to achieve just that. Benefiting from the extra light source, this can help to bathe your living space in light from other areas of the home, while still keeping that intrinsic sense of separation between rooms.
Matching the window’s frame to elements in your living space, such as chairs, side tables and ornaments, keeps things looking purposeful and planned.
49 – Match Your Surroundings With Natural Colours
Rotating your soft furnishings to be in keeping with the seasons is a great way of matching the indoors with the outdoors. While snow is obscuring the true colours, having an autumnal flourish with orange, yellow and red cushions is an easy way to keep your indoor styling cohesive with the window’s view.
This way, you can easily switch in and out different seasonal pieces so that your living room always matches, with pastels for spring and deeper reds and greens for the festive season.
50 – Use Unusual Shapes as Your Influence
No two tables look the same – and that’s certainly the case in this living room example. Using wood-effect tree stumps for side tables, this room shows how unusual styling can work to great effect.
Tying in with other like-minded colours such as the footrest and picture frames, they lay a great canvas on which to build interesting shapes and designs, such as the table lamp and wall print.
51 – Forgo Curtains and Utilise Folding Blinds
For the ultimate in luxury, implementing the use of folding shutters is the way to go. Acting like bi-fold doors, these sections fold away to reveal the outside view, or can be drawn together to create a sense of privacy while not interfering with any of the available light.
While they’re on the more expensive end of the spectrum when compared with curtains or standard blinds, they do offer a sense of luxury and can form a worthwhile investment in any home.
52 – Keep a Sense of Spaciousness With Bright Furniture Tones
If you have a living room that benefits from sunshine all day long, you’ll want to make the most of it – and conversely, if your living room gets no sunshine in the day, you’ll want to make sure the room is as bright and as inviting as possible, and decorating it with light natural tones is the way to go.
Keeping things simple with a light wood floor, complemented by a soft cream sofa and other furniture is a way to keep that sense of airiness alive while bringing in some outdoor elements such as plants and flowers can make sure spaces don’t look too artificial.
53 – Store Firelogs for Function and Decor
You needn’t keep firelogs outside in a damp shed and begrudge your decision every time it’s cold and rainy and you have no logs inside to get your fire going. Employing an inventive way of storing your logs can mean that feat is a thing of the past, as you can simply have them right next to the fireplace, piled high.
Not only is this a practical solution, but it’s also an aesthetic one too, as the logs bring in a sense of warmth from their colour and add an interesting texture to the room.
54 – Keep the Same Tone of Wood Present Throughout
Using the same shade of wood throughout your living space can help to give cohesion, ensuring that your room doesn’t look mismatched – bonus points if you can match your cat to your colour scheme, too!
A warm-toned wood is mixed with a cooler-toned grey in this example, which gives a bright and airy feel, while being warm and cosy, owing to the orange tones.
55 – Match Mirrors, Windows and Storage
Carrying a theme throughout your home is important if you want to create a feeling of cohesion, and it’s something that this homeowner has achieved here. Using the theme of black edges, the theme is repeated in the arms of the chairs and sofa, through the table legs, across the shelving unit and finally in the glass window’s edges.
Although the furniture is different in design, the repeating elements help to make everything work together, giving a sense of belonging.
56 – Add Your Personality to Your Walls With Hanging Records
While we may have seen empty frames hanging on walls and panelling, we haven’t seen hanging records – until now. An easy way to add personality to any space, hanging some of your favourite tracks acts as a great way to show off your personality while creating a talking point for guests.
57 – Paint Brick Features White to Brighten Up Spaces
As we’ve seen before with the fireplace, you can extend your exposed brick painting onto any surface you want – and in this example, some supporting beams have been given that exact treatment.
With the warmth being brought in by other pieces of furniture, such as the dining table, room divider and clock, the rest of the room is neutrally-coloured, giving an infinitely bright and airy feel to the space.
58 – Experiment With a Feature Wall
Instead of painting an entire room one colour, you can be daring and opt for a feature wall instead. Acting as a great contrast for furniture and accessories, the feature wall can be as bold as you like, as it will be balanced out with the rest of the neutrally-coloured room.
Adding in some finishing touches like monochromatic artwork and rugs, together with simplistic shelving units, completes this living space.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Are Some Easy Ways to Make My Living Room More Stylish?
Large floors may benefit from a statement rug, while dark corners might be in need of some lighting to create a sense of warmth and cosiness – or it may just be that adding a few new cushions to your existing sofa was all your room needed to give it a new lease of life.
How Do You Make a Living Room Cosy?
For wooden floors, adding a rug to a central space is a great way of achieving this, while sofas can benefit from blankets, throws and cushions to add some 3D dimensions in different colours, sizes and shapes. Warm tones can also help to up the cosy factor, so if you’re looking to redecorate you can bear this in mind when selecting wall and floor colours.
How Can I Find an Interior Designer?
To learn more about how much interior designers charge and ways to save money, see our handy guide here.
If you’re ready to take the plunge and hire an interior designer to revamp your living room, we can help! Click the button below to compare quotes from interior designers near you:
Click To Get QuotesWhat’s the Best Paint Colour For a Living Room?
Broadly speaking though, the best colour for a living room is completely up to you and your own style or circumstances – those with young children may want to opt for an easy-clean paint to clear up after any mishaps!