A living room should encourage your guests and your family to spend a little while dallying. This can be done by arranging the furniture in ways that encourage conversation or sitting by a fire. Lighting should be sufficient for reading books or magazines or watching television. There should be good conversation starters like a book or interesting artwork or statues to help provide a cultural backdrop. Adding live elements like plants or an aquarium can raise the energy level of the room. Color within your living room is better in warmer tones to evoke a comforting response. If the room is small, the space arrangement is even more important and one should strive for the illusion of space through mirrors or by sizing the furniture in such a way that it doesn't overpower the room.

Placement Of Furniture

Whether you believe in Feng Shui or not, the placement of furniture to allow people to freely move around the room is important. A living room should feel spacious even when it is not. The placement of chairs should allow for some to be next to the fireplace to make it more inviting. Furniture should be spaced so that people can hear each other in normal conversation without having to lean over or move the furniture. The furniture should not block entryways but give a clear view of different entrances.

Lighting

Natural lighting as well as artificial lighting is very important. The living room should be lit with both, one for during the day and the other at night. Lamps can become design statements nowadays. Choose them to complement whatever design theme you have going. Be sure to provide sufficient light for nighttime reading.

Conversation Starters

Artwork, statues, books are all great conversation starters. They help to provide color and a lively environment. They also allow you to give the room a personable feel. Adding books or magazine caddies can help a person resolve to spend some time making them comfortable in your living room.

Natural Or Live Elements

Natural plants not only provide fresh oxygen for the living room and help to use up toxic degassing from carpets, but they also make the room feel more natural too. Adding a few plants help to bring the outdoors in and give the room a healing aura. Pets do the same thing. Pets provide a loving acceptance that radiates joy in living. Just make sure the pets you get are house-trained and low maintenance. Pets can form a sort of living statue that moves around the room and capture's your guests' attention.

Color

You can design the room by using color in your drapes, your furniture, and even your walls. If you are a bit adventuresome, choose to paint one wall a different color than the rest, particularly if it has a fireplace on it. This will draw the eye to the best feature in the room. Other ways of adding color are to wallpaper the room. Try to go with warm or natural colors to help people feel more settled when they are in the room.

Creating More Space

If your living room is small, you will need to give the illusion of space to help the room feel inviting. You can do this by adding a big mirror to a wall. There are even mirrored panels that make a nice backsplash too. You can pick furniture that is sized appropriately for the room, even if your heart is on a larger set. In the end the larger set may overwhelm the room making it feel cramped. Keep the end tables and coffee table in glass or metal formats with lots of visual space around them. This adds the illusion of sparseness that you don't get with wood.