Contemporary living room in London with white walls, medium hardwood flooring and brown floors.

Mid-Century Modern Beach House

Pfeiffer Design

Photo of a retro living room in Sussex.

Country Living Room

Inspiration for a country living room in Devon.

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A Joyful & Accessible Smart Home for Holly

Alwa Interior Design Studio

At Alwa Design Studio, we believe that accessible design should never have to compromise on style, color, or joy. This project was a deeply special one: designing a modern, vibrant, and happy home for Holly, a young lady affected by a permanent disability, as well as creating welcoming spaces for her dedicated carers and visiting guests. The brief was simple but profound: design a house where Holly will feel absolute joy. We moved entirely away from the traditional, clinical look of accessible spaces and instead embraced rich, mood-boosting colour palettes, contemporary furnishings, and uplifting artwork. Smart, Seamless, and Highly Organised: To ensure Holly’s movement through the house is completely effortless, the home was designed with high-tech integrations and a seamless flow. Smart Home Technology: The home features automated electric blinds and smart doors, giving Holly independence and ease of use at the touch of a button. Spacious & Accessible Flow: Every layout was heavily considered to allow wide, clear pathways (as seen in the beautifully gallery-walled hallway) so Holly can navigate her home freely. A Tour of the Spaces" Living & Dining Rooms: Designed specifically for Holly, these rooms are flooded with natural light and feature joyful pops of mustard, vibrant blues, and magenta. It is the perfect modern environment for relaxing or entertaining. The Bedrooms: We designed highly personalised rooms including a bright and beautiful room for Holly, comfortable guest accommodation for visitors, and dedicated, restful rooms for her live-in carers. The Green Shower Room: A chic, modern bathroom featuring deep green tiles, matte black tiles, and brushed brass fixtures, designed specifically for carers and guests. Holistic Wellbeing: Beyond the photographed spaces, the property also boasts a Holly's master bedroom with en-suite, spacious kitchen with hidden door to utility room, dedicated therapy room and a private sanctuary garden for outdoor relaxation. The Design Process & Execution: This home is a testament to fantastic teamwork. Alwa Design Studio provided the comprehensive creative vision, delivering detailed design moodboards and meticulously curated shopping lists. Empowered by these digital design packages, our incredible clients project-managed and executed the vision entirely themselves, bringing this happy, colorful sanctuary to life exactly as intended.

Embassy Gardens

Burbeck Interiors ltd

Design ideas for a contemporary living room in London with white walls, light hardwood flooring, no fireplace, a wall mounted tv and beige floors.

Refurbishment in South East London

Builders Team

Library
Photo of a large traditional enclosed living room in London with a reading nook, grey walls, medium hardwood flooring, a standard fireplace and brown floors.

Bricklane

MM Studio Interior

This is an example of a traditional living room in Other with white walls, dark hardwood flooring, brown floors and brick walls.

Thatched Cottage - Family living room

Reyne Design

A bright and inviting living room, an extension of the modern kitchen in a beautiful 400-year-old thatch cottage. This family-friendly space offers comfort and style with a large corner sofa adorned with patterned cushions, a versatile ottoman, and stunning garden views through bi-fold doors. Designed for relaxation and seamless indoor-outdoor living, it perfectly blends contemporary design with the charm of a period property

Styling & Presentation project

Coastal Home Styling

Living room area styled & dressed to compliment exiting furniture and artwork
Contemporary living room in Dorset with white walls, concrete flooring, a standard fireplace and grey floors.

Frimley Home

Coral Interiors

Inspiration for a contemporary open plan living room in Surrey with beige walls, carpet, a ribbon fireplace, a wall mounted tv, grey floors and a drop ceiling.

Arnos Grove Garden Apartment

VORBILD Architecture

Design ideas for a medium sized contemporary grey and brown open plan living room in London with white walls, light hardwood flooring, a wall mounted tv and brown floors.

Cosy Living Room in Ipswich

Roundwood Interiors

The client fell in love with this colour green so we decided to fully lean in and envelop the space in its cosy embrace. As with so many projects a key thing for this client was storage so we created some built-in cupboards and shelves in the existing alcoves and painted these in a complementary green satin paint to bounce the light around. There are quirky objects and art aplenty in this room, the lighting is a nod to the client’s childhood favourite author, P G Wodehouse, others are displayed with the client’s large collection of interior design books. The client felt that using sustainable options was important, so I sourced all the furniture from second hand sources. The sideboard was a bargain from Facebook Marketplace that was stripped back, paint washed and given new hardware. The footstool provides extra seating, was reupholstered to complement the scheme and doubles as a coffee table with a tray on top. The antique display cupboard came from the client’s childhood home and houses more treasured objects.

Kensington Townhouse

Interiorise

This is an example of a traditional living room in London.

Grade II listed Islington Georgian Townhouse

Emilie Fournet Interiors

Double reception room with Georgian features such as sash windows and shutters, marble fireplace, wooden floor boards, coving. Warm neutral wall colours layered with fabric patterns and rust and green accents

St James' Drive

Omniform

This is an example of a contemporary living room in London.

The Piggery

Todd Sutherland

Design ideas for a contemporary living room in Sussex with white walls, grey floors, exposed beams and a vaulted ceiling.

Fulham Family Home

Imperfect Interiors

The sitting room of our Fulham Family Home project is painted in Little Greene Slaked Lime which feels light and elegant, and the contrasting dark built-in bespoke alcove joinery painted in Little Greene Basalt is perfect for displaying books & ceramics. The pink George Smith linen armchairs create symmetry either side of the marble fire surround, and the vintage style rugs add interest to the oak herringbone parquet floor.

Mulberry House

Snug Kitchens

The drawing room cabinetry was finished in Little Greene Windmill Lane and featured tongue & groove paneling around the fireplace and in the back of the shelving units. We ran the coving around the front of the cabinetry, as well as using the same skirting throughout the room to create a built-in effect.

Meadow View

AR Design Studio Ltd

Contemporary living room in Hampshire with white walls, light hardwood flooring and beige floors.

Living Room Ideas and Designs

Looking for living room ideas? Whether your living room is lacklustre, your lounge is limited in space, your sitting room is suffering from outdated decor or your front room is full of clutter, there are living room ideas and designs that will inspire you to breathe life into your living space. Discover small living room ideas to help maximise tiny spaces or layout ideas that will work with awkward shaped living rooms. Perhaps you’re struggling to decide on living room colours? Read on for help with colours, layout and design ideas, or find inspiration from the millions of living room photos on Houzz.

Living room wallpaper ideas

A good place to start when it comes to redesigning your living room is with the walls. While paint may seem the simplest choice, and easy to change, don’t discredit the design opportunities of wallpaper in living rooms. There are tons of great living room wallpaper ideas, from modern geometric patterns to traditional florals, and loads of ways to use them – you don’t have to cover the whole room or go for the ubiquitous feature wall. You could wallpaper only above the dado rail (if you have one), either side of a chimney breast, or behind a shelving unit to give your displayed items a stylish backdrop.

Discover more living room wallpaper ideas or if paint is more your style, there’s plenty of living room designs to discover when it comes to paint ideas; just browse through the huge selection of living photos and search for the specific paint you’re after if you really want to narrow it down.

Small living room ideas

When it comes to our living room design, we want it to feel as welcoming and personality-filled as possible, but that can be a struggle when we’re working with a small space. But not to fear, there are small living room ideas to help you make most out of what you’re working with.

A couple of small living room ideas can include: working with the height you have – installing floor-to-ceiling bookshelves or drawing the eye to the top of the walls with wallpaper; choosing space-saving or storage-incorporating (or both!) furniture, such as corner sofas with storage space under the chaise longue section; and keeping things symmetrical – a central fireplace with seating opposite, or seats facing each other, can give the illusion of a larger, more grand room. When it comes to the best decor for small living rooms, you can either choose to keep things light and airy to open up the space, or embrace the cosiness of the smaller area you have by going for warm colours and filling the room with your favourite accessories.

Living room layouts and choosing the right living room furniture

When it comes to the layout of your living room, it will depend on what pieces of furniture you have – but how do you choose what living room furniture to add, whether you’re refreshing your living room design or starting from scratch?

The best place to start is with the seating – one corner sofa will usually seat three to four people, and if that’s all you think you’ll need, then you can leave it at that. Placing your sofa along the longest wall helps to make the most of the space, but think about where you want the focus of the room to be, too. If you need more seating, look at armchairs that offer comfort but don’t take up too much space – cramming a room with too many large armchairs is something to avoid. But armchairs and sofas don’t have to be your only options – go for bean bags and floor cushions for an eclectic feel, pouffes and ottomans if you’re more traditional, and smart design chairs for contemporary living room ideas.

Coffee tables are always handy, but you can always add a couple of side tables if you don’t want to clutter the central space in front of seating with anything. If you centre your living room design around a fireplace or TV, then you might want storage and shelving to feature around the focus of your room. There are plenty of style options when it comes to TV units, and you can even go for bespoke living room storage units to make the most of the space if you want a sleek, built-in look. Keep reading below for more living room storage ideas.

Discover a huge range of living room furniture, as well as living room accessories, to help you finish your room design.

Living room design ideas

Struggling with what living room colours to choose, or what style to go with? While a grey living room design is popular at the moment, you might not want to go with the ubiquitous colour. Although, if neutral and contemporary are the living room ideas you’re after, a grey sofa or grey walls will give you a good base to work on. If you want to stay neutral, beige is not your only other option, either. Light yellows, taupes and soft greys will work. Why not try adding simple but plush cushions to your sofa and a rug in these colours to achieve a modern-traditional look?

For contemporary living room ideas, dark blues and greens are on trend, but if you don’t want to dive straight into the dark wall trend, you could opt for a couple of pieces of furniture, or go for dark-hued living room accessories instead. Whites, woods and pastels could work well for Scandinavian living room designs. If an eclectic living room is what you’re after, you could go for large print wallpaper, a statement lighting piece, vibrant rug and lots of colourful book or ornament displays. For a country feel, rustic carpet, stone hearths, comfy armchairs and traditional patterns in creams, greens and browns will give you that cosy cottage feel.

Living room storage ideas

It’s natural that our living rooms tend to attract lots of items and belongings seeing as they act as multipurpose living spaces. Whether you love to read a book; watch a film; let your children play with their toys; practise a craft like knitting or drawing; play a musical instrument or play video games in your sitting room, there will always be a need for a few extra living room ideas that can help you with storage.

Apart from the standard bookcases, side tables and TV units, there are a few other handy living room storage ideas you can invest in. As mentioned before, if you have the room and budget for it, a built-in storage unit could be the way forward. With a well-built unit you could hide your TV, DVDs, players, books, video consoles and all sorts away in one place. If you don’t quite have a large enough area for one, you could look at shelving – either side of the chimney breast is a great place to install shelving if you have one in your living room. And don’t forget living room furniture such as sofas, benches and ottomans that lift up to reveal hidden storage; providing seating and storing space at the same time. With the right storage solutions your living room design could open up and feel so much more spacious and stylish.

Discover more living room storage ideas by browsing these photos.

Once you have your living room storage, colours, design, layout and furniture sorted, all that’s left is to browse the millions of living room ideas on Houzz and save your favourites to an ideabook. If you’re still searching for specific living room ideas, check out the popular pages below:

Whether you want inspiration for planning a living room renovation or are building a designer living room from scratch, Houzz has 422,219 images from the best designers, decorators, and architects in the country, including Burbeck Interiors ltd and Coastal Home Styling. Look through living room photos in different colours and styles and when you find a living room design that inspires you, save it to an Ideabook or contact the Pro who made it happen to see what kind of design ideas they have for your home. Explore the beautiful living room ideas photo gallery and find out exactly why Houzz is the best experience for home renovation and design.

Hereford Road

Anthro Architecture

The front reception room of this grade II listed building was retained with special arched joinery pieces added to help create a sense of depth to the space.