Living Room Design in Apartment. If You Don't Have a Country House

Approaches to living room design for a country house and an ordinary apartment will differ significantly.

Living room design in an apartment requires more functionality and diverse usage of one space.

In a typical apartment, the living room not only serves as the main living area but also performs at least one additional function. For example, in addition to a relaxation zone, it may include a bedroom area, dining area, library, or play area. In a standard one-room apartment, the living room may encompass all zones at once.

In a two-room apartment, the bedroom is usually located in one room, and the living room shares space with the dining area or children's zone.

Photo 1 — Living Room Decoration Options

Photo 2 — Living Room Decoration Options

When developing the interior design of a living room in a standard apartment, it's essential to determine what will be placed there.

Standard apartments often lack large areas.

If you want to visually expand the space, decorate the living room in light tones. Let's look at this more closely.

You can expand the space by decorating walls and ceiling in one color. Dark floors and ceilings with light walls will visually expand the room but make it appear lower.

Photo 3 — Light Walls and Ceiling Make the Living Room Visually Larger

Minimal furniture and open bookshelves won't clutter the space. A variety of light sources (combining ceiling, wall, and floor lighting if desired) will allow you to adjust the lighting level in the room (from intimate twilight to bright daylight).

Remember that lighting is just as important an element of zoning as partitions, color, and floor covering.

Photo 4 — Lighting Zoning

Besides color schemes, the room's perceived size also depends on the pattern. For example, you can visually make your living room taller using vertical stripes on wallpaper. Horizontal stripes will make a small room wider but also lower. Photo wallpapers can help deepen the room. The key is to forget about Soviet photo wallpapers. Today's quality of texture and pattern is far superior to what was available before. With modern photo wallpapers, you can create atmospheres of a forest, ocean depths, or open space in your living room.

Photo 5 — Photo Wallpapers in Interior Design

For decorating living rooms, you can choose a style for any taste. Those who appreciate luxury, strictness, and sophistication will prefer a living room in baroque, rococo, or English styles. For those who love spaciousness and lots of light, Scandinavian or Japanese styles, minimalism, hi-tech, and loft style will be suitable. If you enjoy the freshness and simplicity of countryside life or ethnic motifs, choose a country style, shanty, Chinese, Indian, Moroccan, or African interior. You don't need to copy the entire interior exactly as shown in photos. Take the core idea and concepts, then adapt them to your financial and technical capabilities.

Photo 6 — Colonial Style Living Room

Photo 7 — Minimalism

Photo 8 — Hi-Tech in Living Room

Photo 9 — Loft Style in Interior

Elements in Your Home

Indoor fountains or fireplaces will complement nearly any living room interior in an apartment.

You can find interesting examples of these below.

Photo 10 — Indoor Fountain

By the way, today's variety of fireplaces allows you to choose one that is easy to install in an apartment. For example, electric fireplaces now not only fully imitate the look of live fire but also produce corresponding sounds. Bio-fireplaces do not require connection to utilities, but the fuel (pure alcohol) is quite expensive. Gas fireplaces are more eco-friendly than wood-burning ones and provide excellent heating. However, they require appropriate permits and connection to gas pipelines.

Photo 11 — Bio-Fireplace

Photo 12 — Gas Fireplace