Make your living room cosy

July 29, 2015 Guest Post

When the winter season approaches, there’s nothing better than coming home after a long day at work to a cosy living room, where you can relax and unwind from the long day.

Trying to create a living room that’s cosy can be a difficult task, especially if the room you are working with large, has high ceilings or lots of windows.

To help you make your living room a cosy place to come home to each night, here are some top tips to help get you started.

Lighting has a massive impact
Lamps can help give a room a soft glow, helping it to feel more warm and cosy. Just one large light can make the room seem too bright and harsh. With modern décor, it’s often difficult to find a balance that suits the style of the room, as usually modern rooms lend themselves to brighter lighting, however you can find a balance with lamps dotted around so that you don’t have to rely on natural light or the main light to create a warm atmosphere.

A fire can really make a room cosy and can sometimes act as great lighting into a room. If you have one, make it the focal point and use it as lighting during the winter months.

The use of colour
Many homes tend to go with black and white furnishings as they are neutral colours that can pretty much go with anything. While this approach may save you money for when you come to change your room, it’s often difficult to get a warm feeling with these colours. Reds, oranges, maroons, browns can really help bring warmth to a room and can be done through the use of wallpaper, paint and furnishings.
If you want to keep to white or black, try using cushions, rugs, throws, paintings, ornaments, lamps that have colour in them to help create a welcoming and warm atmosphere.

The materials you use
When you think of the word ‘cosy’, the word soft tends to follow suit. A leather sofa doesn’t really fit into the ‘cosy’ mix and can often be perceived as quite cold. If you only have a leather sofa and don’t plan on changing it, make sure you spruce it up with throws and soft pillows. It’s also useful to use thick curtains that have a warm colour to help enclose a room and shut out any draught from the windows.

Finishing touches
If the space you have is large, it is worthwhile adding some finishing touches around the room to help keep it looking busy. This can be done with vases, ornaments, photos, paintings, lamps etc. Sometimes people use a large living space as their dining and living room area. If this is something that you are looking at doing, make sure that you make a clear separation between the dining and living room space so that it feels as though you have two separate rooms. You can do this by separating the space with the back of the sofas.

Ian Shaw from Morley Glass provided this article. Ian is an expert on all aspects of glazing in residential and commercial properties. He also takes a keen interest in advising people on eco-friendly construction methods via informative articles for various websites.