12 Small Living Room Ideas That Don't Rely on Buying More

Our living room is about 150 square feet with a door on two walls and a radiator under the window. For the first year, every one of the small living room ideas we tried involved buying something – something that folded, something that stacked, something that did two jobs. None of it helped. The room got better when we stopped adding and started moving what was already there.

Everything below can be done on a Saturday with the things you own. A few of them cost the price of a curtain rod. None of them require a bigger room.

Small Living Room Ideas That Start With Moving, Not Buying

The habit in a small room is to push everything flat against the walls, on the theory that it leaves more floor. It does leave more floor, in a shape nobody uses. Most of these ideas are about undoing that.

1. Start by moving one thing away from the wall

Pull the sofa forward by four inches. Turn the armchair in from the corner. The gap behind is barely visible and the room stops looking like a waiting area. It is the smallest change on this list and it is the one we would do first.

A linen sofa standing a hand's width clear of the plaster wall with a narrow shadow gap behind it, and a walnut armchair turned in from the corner — Ten centimeters. You cannot really see the gap, but the room stops reading as a waiting area.

2. Let one corner stay empty

Not a lamp, not a plant, not a basket. A small room needs one place where nothing is happening, and a corner is the cheapest one to give up. The room will feel less full with the same number of objects in it.

Two plaster walls meeting above bare swept oak floorboards with the corner left completely empty, a linen sofa at the edge of the frame — The corner is doing nothing, on purpose. It is the cheapest square meter to give away.

3. Hang the curtains higher than the window

Rod as close to the ceiling as the fitting allows, fabric to the floor. The eye reads the whole height as window. It costs an hour and it changes the proportions of the room more than paint does.

Oat linen curtains hung on a slim dark rod well above the window and falling in long folds to the oak floorboards — The rod goes as high as the fitting allows. The eye reads the whole height as window.

4. Keep the floor visible

Furniture on legs, nothing stored under the sofa, and the rug placed so a border of floor shows all the way round. Continuous floor is what the eye uses to judge the size of a room, and blocking it is what makes small rooms feel blocked.

A linen sofa raised on slim walnut legs with clear space beneath it and a wool rug laid so a wide border of oak floorboards shows all around — Legs, not plinths, and a border of floor all the way round the rug.

5. Choose one color and let it repeat

A small room does not have space for a scheme. Pick one color that is not a neutral – a green, a rust, a muted blue – and let it appear three times, spread apart. Everything else stays quiet. Repetition reads as decision; variety reads as whatever was to hand.

A small living room where one terracotta clay tone appears three times - a cushion, a vase and a small artwork - spread far apart against quiet neutrals — Clay three times, spread apart. Repetition reads as a decision.

6. Make the rug bigger than feels right

At least the front legs of every seat should land on it. A rug that floats in the middle of the room draws a small square in the middle of an already small floor. A large one pulls the furniture into a group and makes the room read as one space.

A very large wool rug covering most of the floor with the front legs of a linen sofa and a walnut armchair both standing on it — Too big always beats too small. The front legs have to land on it.

7. Give the room one generous piece

One thing that is properly sized – a real armchair, a large mirror, a tall plant – gives the room a scale. A small room furnished entirely in small pieces looks like a model of a room, and nothing in it feels settled.

A single large deep armchair in oat linen with a walnut frame, noticeably bigger than everything around it — One properly sized piece. Everything else can be modest.

8. Light from three low points

The ceiling light flattens everything and makes the walls obvious. Three lamps below eye level, same warmth of bulb in each, and the corners get light while the ceiling stays dark. The edges of the room go soft and the room feels less bounded.

A small living room after dark lit only by three warm lamps below eye level, their pools of light reaching into the corners while the ceiling stays dark — Three lamps, one bulb warmth, nothing overhead. The corners get light and the ceiling stays out of it.

9. Put the storage on one wall only

Height works in a small room, but only in one place. All the shelving on the wall you look at least, and the other walls flat. Shelves on three walls turn a living room into a storeroom with a sofa in it.

Floor-to-ceiling walnut shelving filling a single wall with books and clay pots, while the adjoining plaster walls stay bare — Height on one wall only. Shelves on three walls turn a living room into a storeroom.

10. Pick furniture by depth, not by width

A sofa six inches shallower than standard gives you back a walkway. A sofa six inches narrower gives you back nothing you will notice. In small rooms depth is the dimension that decides whether you can move.

A slim shallow-depth linen sofa with a wide run of clear oak floorboards between it and a low walnut coffee table — Fifteen centimeters off the depth is a walkway. Fifteen off the width is nothing.

11. Hang art lower and in one group

Center it around seated eye height, not standing. In a room you mostly sit in, art at standing height floats above everything and leaves a band of empty wall underneath. Grouped and low, it belongs to the furniture instead of to the wall.

Four small pictures in slim dark frames hung together as one group at seated eye height above a linen sofa, with bare plaster wall above — Centered at seated height, not standing height. It belongs to the furniture now.

12. Take one thing out and do not replace it

There is always one. The side table nobody uses, the second lamp, the basket of things that have no home. Remove it, leave the space, and see how the room reads after two weeks. Usually it reads better, and that is the point at which a small living room starts to feel like enough.

A long clear stretch of swept oak floorboards beside a linen sofa catching the afternoon light, the rest of the room settled and lived-in — Something was here. Leave the gap for two weeks before deciding it needs filling.

A Note Before You Start

None of this makes a small room bigger. What it does is stop the room announcing its size – fewer edges, fewer breaks in the floor, fewer lines across the walls, and one place for the eye to rest. A room can be small and still feel finished, and finished is the thing that was actually missing.

If you want to keep going in the same direction, the same thinking applied to a whole apartment is in our small apartment decor notes, and the material side of it is in the case for fewer, better materials.

Questions We Get Asked

How do you make a small living room look bigger?

You mostly do not. What works is making it look continuous – furniture on legs, one floor material, curtains at ceiling height, and a single color running across walls and ceiling without a white break between them. Rooms read as small when they are full of edges, not when they are short of square meters.

Should furniture go against the walls in a small room?

Not flat against them. Pulling seating forward by even four inches, and angling one piece in from a corner, gives the room a middle. Furniture pressed to the walls leaves a floor area in the shape of a corridor, which is the shape nobody sits in.

What size rug works in a small living room?

Bigger than you think – at least large enough that the front legs of the sofa and the chairs stand on it. If the budget only stretches to a small rug, no rug is usually the better choice.

What is the first thing to change?

The curtain height, if the room has curtains. The lighting, if it does not. Both are cheap, both are reversible, and both change how the room feels at the times of day you actually use it.

12 Small Living Room Ideas That Don’t Rely on Buying More

Small Living Room Ideas That Start With Moving, Not Buying