Many of you may be staying in a home with a long and narrow living room.
Sometimes, you may even wonder how to decorate your living room so that every corner feels spacious and cozy.
This is especially true if you stay at home all the time or frequently organize gatherings there.
If you are the latter, I believe you would want to entertain your guests in a spacious manner and make them feel comfortable in your living room.
After all, a living room is the center of a home and the focal point for all.
Here are the 10 easy steps to help you decorate and plan for a more spacious and broader living room.
1. Ensure That Your Living Room Is Clutter-Free
The first step in providing a visually spacious living room and maximizing the space is to ensure that it is clutter-free.
Items not necessary for the living room can be shifted to a more appropriate area in your home or donated.
Examples of items could be vases and lamps, which take up much space.
Removing them will give you an illusion of a more extensive area in your living room.
You can check out more items to declutter in your living room here.
2. Form Distinct Zones In Your Extended Living Room
Instead of having a long hallway as your living room, you can spice things up by creating various zones in your living room.
One of the zones could be the dining area, and the other could be the entertainment area.
These zones could be incorporated with various design ideas to enhance the coziness and comfort level in the living room.
One of the design ideas is to place the rug to distinguish the zones.
Interchange the design and shape of the rugs to draw attention to that specific zone so your living room will not seem long and narrow visually.
Alternatively, you can consider decorating your living room with various ornaments, such as lampshades and pendant lights, in the various zones to add a touch of hygge.
3. Choose The Right Furniture For Your Living Room
It is tedious to select the furniture for your home, especially if you have a long living room.
We often want to choose furniture to our liking so long the space in our home permits.
But that should not be the case if you have a long and narrow living room.
It is crucial to consider the furniture arrangement if you want your living room to look wider and spacious.
One of the design tips is choosing furniture with a “see-through” design, such as open armchairs and open-back chairs.
The open armchairs and open-back chairs provide the illusion of a bigger free space around them and allow for the flexibility of the furniture arrangement as and when you like.
If the open armchairs and open-back chairs are placed close together, they will also provide a relatively intimate conversational space.
You can also choose a glass dining table or a glass coffee table as furniture in your living room.
The glass top allows light to filter through easily, visually expanding the space around it.
4. Bring The Furniture Closer To The Center Of The Living Room
It is tough to nail the ideal living room layout when you have to make do with the space of a long living room.
Usually, the easy way out is to shove all the furniture against the living room’s perimeter to get as much walking space as possible.
But if you want to widen your living room or decorate it to look more spacious, you need to move the furniture to the center of the room.
For example, you can float your couch to the middle of the living room.
Do not be afraid to float your couch to the center of your living room, thinking it will be a space blockage.
Sometimes, it is a matter of perception, and you will get used to it quickly.
Floating the furniture to the center of your living room will focus on the center area instead of a long walkway.
However, one thing to remember when floating the furniture to the center of your living room is to ensure it is clutter-free at the walkway.
5. Make Full Use Of Light
Light brightens up an area and shapes an impressive space effectively, especially in a long living room.
With ample light in the living room, a spacious living room is created.
Therefore, you must use natural sunlight well and work around lighting designs.
Changing the windows is one way to allow sufficient light into your living room.
Consider installing large windows to allow natural sunlight to shine in or roof lights to bring in more daylight.
However, if you are concerned about your privacy, you can opt for tinted or frosted glass windows or window coverings such as shades or blinds.
All these options provide various levels of privacy while allowing sufficient natural light to enter your living room.
Alternatively, you can increase the brightness in your living room through artificial light by adding pendant lights.
6. Explore And Play With The Paint Colors On The Wall
One way to decorate a living room to make it seem bigger is to play with the colors of the wall paint.
The rule of thumb is to use light and cool colors to create an illusion of spaciousness in your living room.
Examples of paint colors would be white, light taupe, blush pink, and greige.
You can explore these few colors and determine which color pleases your eyes and elevates your home’s aesthetic.
Alternatively, you can paint a relatively one to two shades darker color on the opposing shorter walls than the two longer walls in your living room.
By doing so, the walls looked closer to one another, thus forming an illusion of a square living room.
7. Work Around Mirrors To reflect Light In Your Long Living Room
Mirrors in your living room will help create a bigger space if you use the right mirror and place it in the right place.
Place the mirrors near windows or opposite the windows of your long living room to maximize the natural light entering the area.
The light’s reflection diffuses into the area of your long living room, including its dark corners, making the entire area look brighter and bigger.
Mirrors also serve as a functional and aesthetic design element.
Therefore, placing mirrors in your living room will be a great design tip for decorating a long living room.
8. Decorate Your Long Living Room With Accessories
The dimensions and form of accessories contribute significantly to the elegance of a living room.
You can get many accessories to decorate your living room and maximize its space.
Consider using accessories such as lampshades, chandelier bulbs, and candles to incorporate design elements into space and light.
These accessories set the perfect mood and tone in the living room and help maximize the visual impact of light.
9. Utilize The Vertical Space
We know that the floor space in a long living room may be limited.
Therefore, we can focus on making the most of the living room’s vertical space.
Please choose one or two pieces of artwork to be hung on the wall of your living room so that it looks wider.
This will draw the eye upward to the artwork and create the effect of a more expansive living room.
Another way of utilizing the vertical space is to install floor-to-ceiling shelves and wall-mounted cabinets.
It will be best to install either shelves or cabinets to prevent the living room from looking cramped.
10. Incorporate Curve Elements Into Your Long Living Room
One of the popular interior design trends is to use curved lines to soften the appearance of an area.
If you have a long living room, you could adopt the curved design element, such as using rounded edges and corners in your living room.
This helps direct the focus in a circular path instead of a straight one.
Round edges and corners provide an illusion of spaciousness and serve safety and aesthetic functions.
In terms of aesthetic functions, curved edges and corners help to conceal certain awkward corners between two areas.
Also, it adds a touch of harmonious balance between visual appeal and simplicity.
A great design tip is to use rounded edges and corners on the ceiling, a TV feature wall, or display shelves.
Decorating a long and narrow living room is not as difficult as it seems to be.
Now that you are aware of the 10 design tips I have introduced, you must take your time to make the adjustments and decorate your living room.
We would like to know about your changes to your living room.
Let us know in the comments below.