How to Redesign Your Living Room in Five Steps

No matter how well-designed your home, rooms start feeling stale once you've lived in them for a while. That's especially true in the living room, which typically gets lots of use -- relaxing, watching television, spending time with family and entertaining. A costly, full-scale remodel isn't necessary, and it doesn't have to take weeks or months. You can make your living room feel fresh and new with a quick, five-step redesign. Does this Spark an idea?

Instructions

1

Move everything portable -- small furniture, accessories, lamps and artwork -- out of the living room. Move large pieces of furniture to the center of the room in a random cluster; you need to eliminate all traces of the previous arrangement to see the room in a new way.

2

Pretend you're looking around your room for the first time, and find a new focal point. Select a bank of windows if the main seating area was previously grouped around the fireplace, for example. Plan a gallery wall as your focal point if your television usually dominates the room; you can tuck the television unobtrusively among the artwork. Use a large or distinguished piece of furniture as the focal point if there's no suitable architectural feature, perhaps a double bookcase or an armoire.

3

Arrange the primary conversation area around your new focal point. Start with the largest seating piece, which is usually the sofa. Place chairs, settees, ottomans or a love seat around the sofa -- close enough to create a cohesive grouping with the sofa as the anchor. Move cocktail, end and other occasional tables into place among the seating furniture.

4

Place the remaining furniture -- the pieces that aren't part of the main seating area. Place a large piece on the opposite side of the room from your focal point for balance, perhaps a console, chest, desk or a pair of chairs. Stop when the room looks right; you don't have to use it all, and you don't have to fill every wall and corner.

5

Shop the accessories, lamps and artwork you moved out of the living room as if you're browsing them in a store. Consider each item critically. Make sure each works in the room and that you'd buy it again if you really were in a store. Move the objects that pass muster back into the living room, ignoring their previous placements. Poach objects from other rooms if needed.