Determining the style or thematic focus
The design of a small room does not tolerate excesses. Empire, baroque, modern, palace classicism or shabby chic will turn a small area into a space cluttered with details. The solution to the problem of small space will be the following interior directions:
- Classic style;
- Provence;
- Mediterranean style;
- Scandinavian style;
- Loft;
- Ethnics;
- Minimalism.
Once the design direction has been chosen, you can begin to actually implement it.
In any acceptable style, light colors are best suited for a small room in an apartment. They will visually expand the space.
But choosing light wallpaper is not all that is needed for the successful implementation of the project. It is also important to take into account the palette of all other colors and shades.
Principles of decorating small living rooms
In such rooms, light-colored wallpaper should be installed; they visually expand the space and fill it with light. It is not recommended to make everything dark or bright, but you can decorate two adjacent walls according to the principle of light contrast. Dark details are used for the same purpose, for example, wallpaper inserts, paintings, textile elements.
Canvases with large patterns cannot be glued in small rooms. Such compositions are not recommended even when hanging an accent wall, since they clutter the space and change the proportions of the room. To make the space in the room seem larger, choose small patterns in calm tones.
Wallpaper with stripes of different widths is glued to correct the shortcomings of the room. To visually raise the ceilings, vertical zoning of space is used; such pasting is appropriate in rectangular rooms where the walls need to be leveled. In proportional living rooms, vertical lines should be chosen with care. Horizontal lines will visually expand the boundaries of the room; it is recommended to use it in small rooms with high ceilings.
In rooms with a northern orientation, it is necessary to glue only light wallpaper; cool tones of blue and gray can be used in living rooms on the south side.
See what the wallpaper looks like in a small room in an apartment in the photo.
What color palette is best to use?
The harmony of a simple living room is built on the principle of a game of contrasts. Contrast is not limited to a combination of light and dark.
Don't forget about warm and cold shades. For example, a one-room hall in a Khrushchev-era building, which has few square meters, is decorated in blue in accordance with the Mediterranean style. To dilute the cool shades here, you can use several interior items the color of wet sand. Then the warm tone will soften the effect of the cold one, and the overall appearance of the room will look most harmonious.
A house with high ceilings but a small living room area can be darkened a little with appropriate wallpaper. Then the sofa, wardrobe and other furniture should have a light shade. What else can be done on 18-20 sq.m? A square hall can be decorated in a more ornate and bright style than a rectangular one. Ethnics with its explosion of colors and Provence are ideal options for a square. But the classic style in subdued colors is best left to a rectangular room.
Small living room? No problem!
Before choosing the right wallpaper for a small living room, you need to take into account many details related not only to its interior, but also to other details.
In order to start developing some ideas, you should consider factors such as:
- which side of the room the windows face;
- Is the level of illumination throughout the living room area high?;
- what is the height of the ceilings in the room.
As for interior design itself, the following may be the optimal solutions:
Photo: for small living rooms, try not to buy wallpaper with vertical stripes: they create a feeling of compressed space
- For small living rooms, it is better to choose wallpaper that can visually enlarge the space. Horizontal patterns or stripes would be a good option.
- As for the size of ornaments or designs on wallpaper, it is desirable that they be small.
- Avoid buying wallpaper with vertical stripes: they create the illusion of a narrow space. On the other hand, they are perfect for rooms with low ceilings.
- If possible, use neutral and “soft” shades, so popular in 2015.
Decorating Tips
An excellent way to increase space is to connect the hall with a balcony. The window sill, in this case, is turned into something like a bar counter. And the balcony itself is insulated and decorated in a single ensemble with the common room.
One wall made of brick in a loft style will not “eat up” a lot of space if you take into account the perspective correctly. In an elongated room, this wall is placed opposite the window so that it is illuminated as naturally as possible.
In small halls, massive stucco molding is not used. The finishing materials chosen are simple. Paint, decorative plaster and plain wallpaper will help create an “airy” look for any area.
Mirrors mounted in wardrobes and walls will help expand the boundaries of the room as much as possible. During renovation, you should avoid installing wooden partitions and columns; they hide the space, making the room smaller.
Floor
Laminate, parquet and linoleum without large prints are what make the design of a small room more uniform.
Mosaics and tiles, like colorful carpets, will visually reduce the size of an already modest room.
Natural tones of linoleum or laminate must be chosen. This decor can be bright, and its framing should modestly set off decorations and furniture.
Although in corner apartments where there is more than one window, the use of colored or dark floors is allowed. When evening comes, this room should also be illuminated as brightly as possible so that such a floor appears in the interior from its best side.
Ceiling
With low ceilings, there is a rule according to which all complex structures are prohibited. But a suspended ceiling with beautiful spot lighting can be used here. High ceilings and medium-height ceilings are decorated with projections, “starry skies”, and various graphic effects. But the main tone of the ceiling should be light.
If you make a rectangular depression in the middle and then run an LED strip along the edges, any design of a small hall will sparkle with soft and fresh tints.
Small room - miniature lamps. This axiom works flawlessly when decorating. A massive chandelier in a small living room does not look at all, cutting up the space, depriving it of integrity.
Walls
The classic version of the walls in a compact room belongs to a single color scheme. A small fireplace is allowed. Everything around the fireplace should be as light as possible.
Decorative screens, glass partitions and massive projections are considered undesirable. Walls in nude colors will allow you to use much more interior innovations than walls covered with wallpaper with a dark and heavy pattern.
Small rooms are not decorated with wood and leather. These materials look too heavy when used for wall decoration.
How to arrange furniture in a small living room: examples with photos
Pale monochrome palette
Creating a chic small space won't be difficult if you stick to a monochrome palette, as shown in this white living room featured in the IKEA Ideas Lab. A few tricks keep this space from feeling cold and harsh. Beautiful greenery brings color to the space. Natural wood and wicker inserts add a touch of cozy, rustic style.
Texture accentuates the neutral color scheme
When square footage is exceptionally small, make the most of your living room with small furniture, as shown in this space by Boston-based Jamie Keskin Design. The sofa bed creates a cozy space for two. Two end tables that double as shelving provide storage for books. Textural elements such as a wicker coffee table and ribbed ceramic lamps highlight the neutral color scheme.
An elegant statement with luxurious accents
You don't need a lot of things to make an elegant statement. In this beautiful space, furnishings and decorative accents combine luxurious materials and chic colors to lift the mood. A marble coffee table is an eye-catching object. A green leather ottoman and blue velvet chair create dramatic seating. A plush Scandinavian-style rug looks great under bare feet. Starburst mirrors add sparkle without going overboard. The fiddle leaf fig tree shown at right brings a touch of nature.
Sectional sofa
A minimalist L-shaped sectional sofa is a great way to fit as much as possible into a small living room. Los Angeles-based interior designer Hayley Weidenbaum showcases this space as a perfect example. A leather wicker chair is a stylish and compact look that doesn't add visual weight. Houseplants add balance, beauty and character.
White walls and dark furniture
Dark furniture adds depth to this white small living room from Havenly. A rush of natural light prevents a gray sofa and an armchair with a cognac seat from weighing down the space. Do you have high ceilings? A tall fig tree with fiddle leaves, as shown on the left, will contrast nicely with the crisp white walls. An area rug on the wall adds a bit of warming orange to tie the room's color scheme together.
Meet Scandinavian chic
IDF Studio, a San Francisco-based design firm, created this small living room that is a blend of California casual style combined with Scandinavian decor. The pale color palette gives the room a calm and relaxing atmosphere. Notice the books? The page spread works with the color scheme of the room.
Exchange trinkets for beautiful greenery
Transform a quaint corner into a cozy little living room
The rug on the floor cuts a corner. The window is the central focal point. The sofa underneath anchors the space. The gallery wall on the left further defines the space. A small mid-century marble coffee table and armchair provide practical use.
Use paint to cut out a small living room
A bright yellow wall adorns the small living room in a small one-bedroom apartment designed by French interior designer Marion Alberger. Comfort is created by two pieces of small furniture in soft tones, a sofa and an armchair. Tiny, long coffee tables don't take up precious square footage.
Small living room in Palm Springs style
Plants throughout and floral wallpaper give the simple living room an incredible impact. Furniture in soft colors allows the greenery to blaze.
When creating this article, materials from thespruce.com sites were used.
Add to bookmarks
Choosing furniture
Furniture in a panel house is most often standard. Rustic style in a one-room apartment is nonsense. But for a home with small rooms, wooden furniture is perfect.
When choosing furniture for your apartment, you can pay attention to the following tips:
| Fits | Doesn't fit |
| Glass coffee table | Table for magazines with massive legs and plenty of decor |
| Laconic sofa in natural shades | Huge leather sofa with large elements |
| Built-in bookshelves | Full wall bookcase |
| Sliding wardrobe with mirrored doors | Cabinet made of one type of material |
Thus, when furnishing a small room, it is necessary to abandon bulky things. Such furniture can be replaced with small analogues of a pleasant color. The use of furniture called “transformer” is encouraged. Height-changing tables, chair-beds and similar things save a lot of space.
Lighting
Spot lighting is the most suitable option for such a room. Wall sconces should also be compact and discreet so as not to distract attention from the overall picture.
Illumination of ceilings, shelves and TV in a small room is welcome. When choosing lamps, you can give preference to glass spheres, shades in the form of tulips and roses, and lamps with a mirror base.
Chandeliers with many hanging parts are not suitable for a small room. Even in small lamps, conciseness and simplicity are encouraged.
Selecting the type of wallpaper
Wallpaper in a living room or hall should be amazing, and it doesn’t matter whether the room is large or small. As numerous studies show, it is in the living room that guests get a complete impression of the owner’s apartment. It is the style of decoration of the hall that shows the guest how the owner treats his home. Therefore, the decoration of the hall must be done with high quality and we repeat once again, it does not matter whether the room is small or large.
Using plain wallpaper of two colors in the living room
If you are going to hang wallpaper in your main room with small dimensions, it is better to choose from the classic types: paper, vinyl non-woven. This choice will be justified by the ease of working with finishing materials and good, high-quality repairs in the end.
About paper
Paper wallpapers are available in several versions:
- washable, made of single-layer paper coated with varnish;
- single-layer (simplex wallpaper format), made of thin paper in one layer;
- two-layer, called duplex, modern;
- acrylic, consisting of a paper base and acrylic coating.
For a small room, duplex wallpaper is optimal; in addition, you can consider an acrylic option, taking into account that there will be no direct contact with the wall in the room.
Duplex wallpapers are strong, easy to apply to the wall, and the range of such canvases is large, since they are produced in factories all over the world. However, the canvases are afraid of sunlight and moisture, so we set their shelf life at five years.
Related article: Aspects of creating a podium in the bathroom
Wallpaper with a repeating small pattern in the living room
Wallpaper with acrylic foam paper is less durable, single-layer, but it is suitable for the living room due to its chic appearance. After undergoing heat treatment, acrylic takes on unimaginable shapes; wallpaper with foam made from this material looks simply gorgeous. However, these canvases, like all paper wallpapers, are afraid of moisture, and in addition, their texture is very fragile and does not tolerate mechanical stress.
About vinyl
With vinyl wallpaper everything is much simpler; all types of vinyl wallpaper are perfect for a small room.
We list the main options for vinyl wallpaper:
- foamed vinyl with a texture similar to acrylic paper wallpaper;
- compact vinyl, durable vinyl created using complex chemical technology;
- washable vinyl, a kitchen option, but for those who like an extraordinary approach, it can be used;
- hot-stamping vinyl, strong, reliable, simply indestructible material;
- silk-screen printing, a continuation of the theme of hot-stamping vinyl, even more advanced wallpaper with an unusual shine.
If we consider foamed vinyl wallpaper, which construction stores are now teeming with, it is worth noting that this material is not the strongest and most reliable. It is not recommended to wash it, other than wiping it with a damp cloth, so if the wallpaper gets scuffed, which may well happen if it hangs on the walls of a small Khrushchev-era building, it will be extremely difficult to wash it.
Despite the affordable price, you should not use foam vinyl wallpaper in small rooms; it is better to save them for spacious apartments.
Compact vinyl and washable vinyl are all kitchen options that are only suitable for the hallway; they are not suitable at all for creating a normal living room interior. By the way, you’ve probably seen wallpaper in the form of brick, stone, leather in small hallways, and this is exactly what compact vinyl is. They fit perfectly into the design of our clumsy Khrushchev building.
Application of compact vinyl wallpaper in the living room
It turns out that for our hall, wallpaper made using hot stamping technology is suitable for us. Yes, we can talk about these canvases endlessly, because today, these are the most advanced wallpapers, there is simply nothing more perfect than them.
Related article: Window casings: do-it-yourself making
Hot-stamping vinyl wallpaper is not afraid of moisture, light, mechanical influences, it does not absorb odors, muffles noise, is easy to clean and stick to the wall, and the shelf life of this product is unknown. Usually people simply get tired of their wallpaper and change it to something else.
The range of canvases is very wide, but in our case, for a small room, it would be appropriate to choose wallpaper of a narrow standard of 0.53 meters rather than a wide one of 1.06 meters; gluing it to short walls is much more convenient. If the walls of your Khrushchev building allow you to glue wide canvases, then there is nothing to think about, you need to take them for your hall.
The practice of combining wallpaper on different walls
These vinyl wallpapers are produced by factories in different countries. Recently, domestic manufacturers have improved in quality. Otherwise, as always, Europeans and Americans dominate the construction market.
Note that non-woven vinyl wallpapers make up 60-80% of the assortment of any wallpaper store.
About non-woven fabric
If you want to make your walls smooth and monochromatic, then there is nothing better than using paintable wallpaper. In this case, it is best to choose the non-woven version; it is just suitable for gluing in apartments and houses.
Non-woven fabric is the basis of modern vinyl wallpaper, but it also performs well as a separate material. In our case, it will become an excellent base for paintwork.
Pleasant colors chosen for the living room
Non-woven wallpaper can be painted several times, so there is no need to worry about the color, it can always be replaced. By the way, let's think about the color and pattern that will suit us best in our small room.
Selection of curtains and other textiles
When the apartment is on the upper floors, there is no need to use blind curtains. It is enough to hang translucent tulle and curtains made of thin translucent material on the windows.
In cases where you need to close the windows as much as possible in the evenings, you can pay attention to plain curtain options in discreet and nude shades without prints or patterns. Blinds will fit perfectly into the interior of a compact room. When using them, it is allowed to choose a material of bright colors with an interesting pattern.
Textiles on chairs, pillows, and sofas must match the chosen style. Velvet and velor visually make the space heavier, while silk, satin, satin and cotton make it more spacious.
The tired recommendations about light colors in the interior of a small room are also relevant here. Although there are exceptions to the rules. When decorating a room in an ethnic style, you can use imitation fur, bright fabrics, and feathers in the interior.
Choosing a color scheme for the hall
A small room can become bright and spacious thanks to the correctly selected colors of its design.
For the interior of a small living room, a low sofa is best suited.
It’s good when this room has high ceilings - they will visually enlarge the living room. But if they are low, then their finish should be light.
It is better to exclude unnecessary details from the interior. Otherwise it will be overloaded.
If a stepped, plasterboard or suspended ceiling is to be used when arranging a room, then you can combine several shades and colors that can divide the room into zones and at the same time emphasize each other.
Opt for an accent color that will brighten up the neutral color scheme of the entire room.
In a small room, there is no need to decorate the walls and ceiling in dark colors, and the wallpaper should be selected in light, neutral shades with small prints or be completely monochromatic so as not to be conspicuous, not to stand out from the general background and to emphasize a certain style, and not to do otherwise. necessary, flashy notes in the living room, thereby making it tasteless and unattractive.
The glossy ceiling and diffused light go well together. They visually expand the area of the room and make it stylish.
Colors that can be used in the hall to visually expand the room and make it lighter and more spacious: beige, olive, pastel colors, as well as light shades of yellow, purple, gray, blue, pink. The color scheme should also be selected based on the presence of large and small windows in the room, as well as according to their exit to a certain side. For example, if the windows are large and face south, then natural lightening can be shaded with yellow shades and make the living room bright and sunny. For the north side, cool shades of gray or blue would be ideal, which will make the room strict and at the same time cozy and comfortable. This color scheme will calm you down and create a peaceful mood.
It is better not to use curtains made of thick fabric. They make the interior heavier.
Non-standard room shape
An irregular room is a room with a sloping ceiling or asymmetrical walls. The design of this option is complex and requires the involvement of a professional. Non-standard rooms also include spaces that are too narrow.
But there are still a couple of simple tips for this case:
- In a narrow room, the ends are made bright to harmonize the proportions of the area;
- A low and sloping ceiling is decorated with natural materials to integrate it into the overall composition;
- Rounded or extra corners are covered with screens and furniture to give the space clear boundaries;
- All bright decorative accents are placed in areas opposite to the problem areas.
These simple rules will help you avoid gross interior mistakes when decorating a non-standard room. By the way, false windows and curtains in a non-format interior are also an effective decoration technique.
Sometimes in an informal room you have to take radical measures. After all, by decorating the walls and completing them, the room can be made proportional. Only there will be even less space in it, and new interior problems will arise that will have to be solved.
