How to Create a Living Room Your Whole Family Will Love?

The living room is a place to relax, unwind after a long day at work, entertain your guests, and bond with your family. However, if your aim is to create a room that can cater to every member of your family, you need to learn how to balance between the appearance of the room and its practicality. This might imply a few small design-related sacrifices, but they’ll definitely be worth the effort when you see how many loving family memories can be created once you start spending more time together. With that in mind, here are a couple of things you should do to make your living room fit your family’s needs.

Take into account your lifestyle

If you have young kids who like to run inside the house regardless of how many times you tell them not to, then decorating your living room with many fragile and expensive items might not be the best idea. There’s no point in designing a beautiful living room if you know it will probably get destroyed the moment one of your little monsters sets foot into it. This is why your living room design needs to be resilient and able to withstand any potential sibling fights, “no-ball-in-the-house” moments, pets that refuse to go outside when it’s cold, etc. In other words, think about your daily routine and decorate your living room accordingly, even if that implies matching the furniture color to the expected color of future stains.

Related:

Living Room Decorating Ideas on a Budget

Don’t wait too long for decorating

Considering everything mentioned above, many families decide to put off decorating until their children are old enough to at least try not to destroy everything. This isn’t as good of an idea as it sounds because kids can learn, and if you decorate your living room while they are still young, you can teach them the importance of having nice things. They will learn to respect them, and who knows, they might even help you redecorate when the time comes. This is another plus because they will be less likely to put their dirty sneakers on a beautiful blue rug they themselves chose.

Don’t be afraid of colors

Although getting a white silk couch might not be the most family-friendly choice, there’s nothing wrong with choosing another vibrant color, as long as you enforce a couple of rules that will protect it or add a nice throw that can take the potential food-related damage instead of it. Another great idea is to choose a sofa with a nice pattern and texture that would make any unavoidable stains less noticeable. Just make sure your whole family can actually fit on it – having big and comfy sofas is one of the most important parts of designing a living room that your whole family can enjoy.

Make sure to buy quality furniture

Your comfy new sofa is very likely to turn into your kids’ newest trampoline the moment you turn your back on them. You might think that keeping that old furniture you don’t really care about is the best thing you could do when there are kids around, but it’s actually the opposite – look for high-quality, heavy, hardwood furniture that can survive just about anything. This kind of furniture is also good because it can be reupholstered once you decide on a different look. Moreover, when buying tables, shelves, and counters, make sure the corners are round – or buy corner protectors – in order to prevent any potential bruises.

Pay attention to the walls

If you have younger kids, have no doubt that your walls will take a beating. They will be a part of every game that includes balls, and they will be canvases for testing the newest set of crayons. This is why you should definitely consider using wipeable or washable paints. Also, if you have a future Picasso in the house, think about painting one of the walls with chalkboard paint so they can freely unleash their inner artist. Also, the areas around the door frames and light switches are quite prone to stains and hand marks, so it might not be a bad idea to paint them with a darker accent color.

Designing a living room that your whole family can spend time in – and that will stay in one piece afterward – can sometimes be quite a challenge. So, think about your daily routine and what you can do to protect your most valuable furniture items, paint the walls in suitable colors, install MDF wall panelling, buy quality furniture, and try to teach your kids the value of having nice things. If you do all these little details and include your whole family in the process of creating your perfect living room, you can rest assured that it will become everybody’s favorite room in the house.

Author Bio: Cooper Klein is an entrepreneur with a degree in Marketing, based in Sydney. He’s interested in business and home decor. In order to spend more time with his family, Cooper decided to take a break, and he’s currently working from home as a blogger for SmoothDecorator. You can find him on Twitter.