Cramped Long Living Room? Open it Up With These Savvy Furnishing Tips
Long, narrow living rooms can feel cramped and confining. With some strategic furnishing choices, however, you can make your elongated living space feel more open and inviting.
Read on to learn how to furnish your skinny living room for maximum comfort and style.
Define Separate Living Zones
Instead of treating your long living room like one giant, unbroken space, take a cue from open floor plan homes and divide it into distinct living zones. Use furniture groupings to create designated spaces for conversation, reading, media-viewing and more. This segmenting trick is one of the simplest ways to keep your narrow living room from feeling like a bowling alley.
Try placing a sofa and a pair of chairs around a rug to form a cozy seating area, then add shelving units and a desk to make a home office zone across the room. Area rugs are great for delineating functional spaces within the larger room.
Choose the Right Furniture Shapes and Sizes
When furnishing a skinny living room, oversized bulky pieces are a no-go. Not only will they clutter up precious floor space, but large imposing furniture tends to accentuate the room's length. Instead, look for compact, low-profile pieces with an airy, leggy look. Dainty, transparent furniture takes up less visual space.
Curves and rounded edges are also preferable to boxy shapes with sharp corners. A curved sofa or oval coffee table fits better in a narrow room than a big square one. Modular furnishings with customizable components allow you to adapt your furniture to the unique proportions of your space too.
Furniture Placement
Lining up couches, chairs and cabinets squarely along the walls will only emphasize your living room's long skinny footprint. For a more dynamic look, float furniture away from the walls and experiment with angled placements. Positioning chairs diagonally across from each other makes for easier conversation. Break up right angles whenever possible.
A curved or serpentine furniture layout helps too, guiding the eye around the room rather than straight down the long empty center. Scatter decorative objects between furniture groupings to further reduce negative space.
Use Mirrors Strategically
Mirrors do wonders for opening up narrow interior spaces. Their reflective qualities beautifully bounce natural light around, creating the illusion of extra width and depth. Place tall leaning mirrors strategically behind seating arrangements to amplify light from windows and brighten up dark corners.
Hanging a large mirror on one of the shorter walls can also make your living room appear wider than it is. Just avoid positioning mirrors directly across from windows, as this may cause problematic glare.
Incorporate Multifunctional Furniture
Given the spatial constraints of a skinny living room, it pays to seek out furniture that multitasks. Ottomans with hidden storage offer extra seating and organization. Benches stow clutter while providing additional seating when needed. Look for coffee tables with built-in shelves or drawers for keeping remotes, blankets and more out of sight.
Other great options include convertible sofa beds for accommodating overnight guests and murphy beds that fold up into the wall to free up valuable floor space when not in use. Nesting tables, folding chairs and other pieces with expandable, stowable capabilities enable you to customize your furniture arrangement as needed.
More Tips for Opening Up a Narrow Living Room
In addition to strategic furniture selection and placement, make the most of lighting, color and decor to visually expand your cramped living room.
Layer ambient, task and accent lighting, using floor lamps and table lamps to illuminate distinct activity zones. Sconces flanking a narrow wall also draw the eye outward, as do hanging pendant lights positioned over seating areas.
Painting one long wall a bold accent color makes it a focal point, breaking up the expanse. Colorful throw pillows, blankets and accessories also help enliven the space. Don't be afraid to play with contrasting hues.
Lastly, incorporate visual interest through varied textures, patterns and eye-catching accents. Gallery photo displays, artwork, tall plants and greenery all help direct sightlines around the room. Use mirrors and metallics to infuse shine. An area rug with a bold print grounds the space in style.
While furnishing and decorating a narrow, cramped living room presents unique challenges, a few savvy tweaks go a long way. Define separate living zones, choose compact multifunctional furniture and use lighting, color and mirrors to open up the space. With smart, strategic furnishing you can enjoy an inviting living room that belies its skinny proportions.