A poet once put it this way, "You can go to school but you cannot buy class". True to his word, there are things in this world that money cannot buy but we need it to do such things. A classy living room means that everything about it from the furniture, to the ambience, it should be impeccable. This however calls for another rare gift to achieve - creativity!

They say some of us were born with it, and that some of us have no clue on how to express it, but thankfully, there are interior designers who were born for such jobs; the balance of life you might call it. What then do you need to make your living room the talk and envy of the neighborhood?

1.      Non-conventional furniture

Since the key word here is creativity, non-conventional should not really raise eyebrows. The key thing here is to be inventive, normally from the existing designs of furniture. You can play around with different types of materials to make your furniture and see whether it would fit your living room. It is wise to start with a sketch or pictorial representation to see how your imagination can be altered to suit the living room.

The other step is actualizing your design and that involves construction of your furniture and this call for close supervision to ensure the carpenters or those involved with the construction of the furniture get it right. Your furniture should embrace the color of the room, to create harmony or contrast depending on what you are going for. You should have seats that embrace your space and their arrangement should seek to do two things, hide either the lack of space or the presence of too much of it.

The other thing this furniture can help you do is to mark out boundaries, such that the TV viewing area of the living room, the study and the fire place and distinguished by the type of furniture or arrangement they have especially with the sofas. Traditionally, it is prudent to place the television where it can be viewed from different parts of the living room.

2.      Lighting

Lighting here does not only mean bulb arrangements, or type of bulbs; it means more than that, it is the way light is spread out in the room. Your neighbors have embraced the new technology of LED lights but the fact is, in most things, it is not what you have, it is what you do with it. With these LED bulbs for example, you can arrange them in such a way to create an impression of space and modulate them to fit the mood of the evening.

During the day, you should have natural light flowing into the room by having wide windows and reflecting glasses. Employ different sources of light to mostly suit different moods, you can use candles for romantic evening, LED light to light up the room and incandescent bulbs for reading space for instance.

3.      Let your art do the talking

Art has been from the beginning of time been a way of expressing yourself, in your living room, this is no different. The design idea for your living room is to have the art in your living room dictate what type of design and colors you will embrace. If for instance you have an image of flowers in your living room, the preceding designs, even on the furniture covers will be flowery but not too much to let the room look diverse.

4.      Paint job

It all however boils down to color because color dictates the mood of the whole house. If your living room have a bold color such as red and it is well synchronized with the rest of the thing; the effect will be breath taking. It is important to inquire from a professional interior designer in order to get the color right and therefore get all things right.

Following these guidelines will revolutionize your living room and is guaranteed to leave your neighbors' tongues wagging.

Author's bio

Merlin is an interior designer and she has a vast amount of knowledge on the subject. She has also written blogs on sofas and their effects on space. You can visit her on this link to find out more about sofas