Thinking of sprucing up your living room for the new year? Here are 10 living room design ideas taken from Dezeen’s archive of lookbooks, featuring suggestions for colours, furniture and lighting.
Since 2020, Dezeen has published more than 350 lookbooks that give visual inspiration for all kinds of interiors, based on the stories we publish.
Below, we’ve collected 10 lookbooks into a useful guide that captures key trends for designing and updating a living room.
This is the latest in our lookbooks series, which provides visual inspiration from Dezeen’s archive. For more inspiration, see previous lookbooks featuring bedrooms with creative lighting solutions, interiors with gold and silver accents and all-white interiors.
A consistently popular interior design trend is the combination of Japanese and Scandinavian aesthetics, known as Japandi.
Defined by minimalist design and natural materials, the Japandi style makes for a calming living room setting, as exemplified in our lookbook of 10 elegant living rooms that adopt the style.
Pictured above is a home in Tokyo by Norm Architects and Keiji Ashizawa Design, which features wood surfaces and neutral-toned furnishings.
See more Japandi living rooms ›
Ample storage is vital to creating functional, clutter-free interiors, and our lookbook of living rooms with statement shelving gives examples of how to incorporate beautiful storage into the design of a space.
The selection of interiors includes custom shelving designed to show off the owners’ book collection and units that double as room dividers.
The image above shows a renovated factory in New York, where architects Ravi Raj and Evan Watts added built-in storage in an eye-catching pastel yellow.
See more living rooms with statement shelving ›
If you want to make a bold statement in your living room, add a gigantic sofa.
Our lookbook of living rooms with giant sofas shows spaces that prioritise ample sitting space, making the couch the focal point of the interior.
For his overhaul of a classic Haussmann-era Parisian apartment, shown above, interior designer Rodolphe Parente aimed to contrast the building’s original features with contemporary pieces, including a sculptural sofa that dominates the space.
See more living rooms with giant sofas ›
Make a sculptural coffee table the centrepiece
You could also make a sculptural coffee table the focus of your living room, using it as a centre point to arrange the seating around.
Tables ranging in shape from geometric stone slabs to curved and waved forms were featured in our lookbook of eight contemporary living rooms with sculptural coffee tables.
In the image above, interiors firm DAB Studio opted for a glass tabletop perched on cuboid and cone-shaped blocks, which complements the other angular furniture pieces in the Dutch house.
See more living rooms with sculptural coffee tables ›
Paper lamps offer a versatile lighting option for living rooms, creating a warm, cosy glow and adding organic textural surfaces.
Drawing upon traditional Japanese rice paper lanterns, our lookbook of living rooms illuminated by paper lamps showcases the variety of shapes and sizes they come in.
Shown above is a beach house in the Hamptons, where a large spherical paper lamp was suspended over a double-height living room to cast its glow on the home’s timber structure.
See more living rooms with paper lamps ›
Adding a rug is one of the easiest ways to transform your living room, whether it’s to inject some colour or help zone different areas.
Our lookbook of living rooms with statement rugs gives inspiration on how to use rugs to tie together the furniture in a space.
New York firm No Architecture used a warm-toned rug in the living room pictured above, which complements a wooden coffee table and contrasts a navy sofa.
See more living rooms with statement rugs ›
To enhance the sense of cosiness in your living room, add a suspended fireplace.
As our lookbook of lounge areas with suspended fireplaces shows, ceiling-mounted stoves and log burners create an interesting focal point that hovers above the ground.
An example is the fireplace at Marramarra Shack in Australia, pictured above, which is surrounded by tiered seating on one side and a large window overlooking a creek on the other.
See more suspended fireplaces in living rooms ›
Warm it up with autumnal shades
Although autumn only comes once a year, the red and orange hues often associated with the season make for a cosy living room colour palette all year round.
Dezeen’s lookbook of living rooms decorated in autumnal shades highlights living rooms with furniture and surfaces in deep reds, rusty terracottas and burnt oranges.
The image above shows an apartment in New York‘s West Village, where interior designer Olivier Garcé added a terracotta-toned upholstered chair, a coffee table with a pink-glazed lava stone tabletop and a floor lamp with a fire-engine red shade.
See more autumnal living rooms ›
For a relaxed and informal feel, decorate your living room with low-slung furniture.
Sofas, tables and storage units that sit low to the ground are featured in our lookbook of eight living rooms where low-slung furniture creates a casual lounge atmosphere.
Pictured above is a converted factory apartment in Barcelona, where a slow-slung shelf, table and sofa with deep seats enhance the high vaulted ceilings.
See more living rooms with low-slung furniture ›
If you want to go even lower than low-slung furniture, you could build a retro-inspired conversation pit into the ground for an intimate gathering space, as shown in our lookbook of residential interiors with cosy conversation pits.
Popularised in the mid-twentieth century, conversation pits have made a comeback in recent years as architects have reimagined the sunken sofa.
Purple cushions line the 13-square-metre sunken pit in the living room of Pam and Paul’s House in California, shown above.
See more interiors with conversation pits ›
This is the latest in our lookbooks series, which provides visual inspiration from Dezeen’s archive. For more inspiration, see previous lookbooks featuring bedrooms with creative lighting solutions, interiors with gold and silver accents and all-white interiors.
