Decorating a living room: plan the room right before you buy a single piece

The living room has to handle the most of any room: socialising, TV, reading, sometimes work and play — often at the same time. That's also why it's the room where the most décor purchases go wrong. The solution is to plan the zones before the furniture, and test the whole before anything is ordered.

Start with the zones, not the sofa

List what the room actually has to handle and sketch the zones roughly: seating group, reading nook, media area, possible workspace. Only once the zones are set do you know which sofa fits — not the other way round. The most common expensive lesson is the sofa bought first that then dictated everything.

Scale decides everything

• The sofa: leave at least 45–50 cm of passage around it — a too-large sofa turns the room into a corridor
• The rug: big enough that at least the sofa's front legs stand on it — small rugs chop up the room
• The coffee table: about two-thirds of the sofa's length, at seat-cushion height
• TV distance: roughly three times the screen's height — it locks where the seating group can go

Light in three layers

A living room needs ambient light (ceiling), task light (reading lamp, work lamp) and mood light (table lamps, string lights). Three layers on a dimmer handle all the room's roles — that's the difference between a room for everything and a room for nothing.

Test the whole room digitally first

The zones, the scale, the style — all can be seen before you buy. Photograph the room, enter the dimensions and describe the plan: "seating group by the window, reading nook in the corner, light Scandinavian style". A minute later you see whether the plan holds in reality — and can adjust for free instead of regretting expensively.

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