What is the living room actually?

The living room is usually the biggest room you can find in a home. This is the room where people live (that's why the name). It is also the reason why it is being combined very often with the kitchen, but that doesn't have to be necessary. In older European houses (say between the 17th and early 20th century), the living room was at the bel-étage, the floor where the owner of the house used to be.

Under the bel-étage (which is the ground floor), you had the floor of the servants, with the kitchen, because after all, someone with (a lot of) money didn't cook, there were servants to do it for them. So, there could be certain differences on the layout of a living room, but fortunately, there are many things living rooms have in common. After the entry hall, the living room is an important place of what kind of impression you leave behind for your visitor, and also, how you yourself want to be in the living room in your spare time: comfortable, easy-going, or maybe high-energy and efficient?

Do you want to re-arrange your living room?

Do you want to do something new with your living room? Peaceful like in the English countryside? Hi-tech, lean and efficient? Showy? Homely, almost bordering the Biedermeier style? Victorian?

If you hire an interior decorator for the (furniture) arrangement of your living room, he can visualize this with a few pictures on a moodboard. The longer you talk with the interior decorator, the better he can arrange a room according to what fits with you. This is also the way to make your own living room more personal: There are things of the furniture that reflect what's typically you, and that's what makes your living room unique. The advantage of an interior decorator is that you don't have to re-invent the wheel, since he has more experience, but of course, you yourself can give your living room a nice arrangement!

What do you want to do with your living room?

The bigger a room, the more possibilities you have to change something about it, but let's try to keep things simple. The living room usually has two functions, to relax/to live and to receive guests. For your guests, you usually want to make it as comfortable as possible: a couch where they can relax a little bit, or some cosy armchairs, also known as the fauteuils, like they're being called in French. Further some good lighting such as a floor lamp will also contribute to a good ambiance, a salon or coffee table for the drinks, and maybe also a TV console or TV stand?
Although it's uncommon in the States, there are many people in Europe without a TV set. I also don't have a TV, as I don't feel the need to have one. After all, TV is also quite time-consuming... On the other hand, I do have an Internet connection, because otherwise it would be rather hard to make the decoration-ideas.com website in the first place! The advantage of a home without a TV is that friends will less quickly make a hang-out corner of your living room (not everyone lives on his own where he can do whatever he wants)... Of course, other people like to have their living room to be a cosy hangout corner, but well, life is all about priorities...
As I mentioned earlier, you also have many people nowadays who merge their kitchen and dining corner (or room) with the living room, so that they have a much bigger open space like this which unifies of course.

Further it's also possible to put some cupboards in your living room, and a few works of art. And what about an extra carpet on the floor? It creates a bit of a cosy "island", which feels extra comfortable for the feet!

How do you want to have it arranged?

Start in 2D first: the moodboard.

So, these are the possibilities furniture-wise of what you can do with your living room. What I am going talk about now is how an interior decorator is going to redecorate your living room. First of all, the question will be: what do you want? Maybe you don't know, and you'll need his advice... Or maybe you know your living room needs a change, but you don't know how? This is something the interior stylist will try to find out. These findings will be put on what's called a moodboard. The moodboard is usually a (digital) collage of pictures to visually communicate what kind of ambiance or furniture the room should have. If you want to make one yourself, you can have a look at http://www.moodboard.com/ . You can also think of the colors you would like to have, but usually, they will already be reflected from the moodboard itself. If you don't know for sure, an interior decorator can find it out for you, and usually, he'll be right, because how a person is, tells a lot about what kind of furniture fits with him or her. Like this, you won't find bright pink in a real Baroque or Rococo interior, since Baroque is mainly meant to impress someone by the greatness, and by the exaggerated decorations, and not per se by a color that attracts the attention. And with Rococo, it is supposed to be more casual: soft pastel colors of light blue, light pink and light yellow: so heavenly you would be dreaming of it! With postmodernism however (post WW-II including the retro era), it will be possible to find bright pink interior... That was also the time when everything seemed to be possible. The exact science and hard work (the ideals of the establishment back then which were based on modernism) did not give the answer on the problems of society... It hadn't been able to prevent the Second World War for example... So, do you already know which idea fits with you? No? Maybe it's time to have a professional interior decorator to give you some ideas?

Making 2D sketches: the concept.

OK, when the moodboard has been made, the interior stylist will start making sketches of the room from a certain concept. This concept should fit with what the client wants, because like this, we'll create the ambiance for the room that has to be arranged.
One of the design studies I did was for a business student with a big apartment in Amsterdam, which was so big that was quite difficult to figure out what to do with all that space. It was so big that it almost looked like he was camping in the room, rather than making it a home. To come with a concept, I was thinking of what he would be facing in his daily life: Apart from the finances, a business person also has a lot to do with law and order: the legal regulations. So, like that, the ground plan had much alike of an aircraft carrier, which also became my concept. The main aisle of the apartment was therefore the runway of the ship: diagonally compared to the outside walls. On the pictures below you can see a few 3D models which I used for the presentation. So, since I knew there would be a diagonal aisle, I could start with making the rooms. Usually the first sketch of the ground plan isn't the only possible solution, so that's why a few variantions in drawings will be made. A client can always have different ideas of how things should be... Maybe he or she wants the couch to be at a totally different place?

Work out your design in 3D: the arrangement.

With a ground plan, you can have a good impression of what the living room is going to look like, but very often, there's also the need to have a 3D representation with length, width and depth. You can do it with a computer program like Maya from the softwaremaker Autodesk, like the picture on the right. You don't have to, because you can also use a maquette, or scale model to show what it's going to look like. If the client has an idea with the moodboard, groundplan and 3D's what it's all about and what everything is going to look like, and if he agrees, the interior decorator can start with the arrangements.

All in order?

From this point on, the orders can be placed and the rebuilding of can be started: This does NOT mean that the work of the interior decorator ends here. He'll need to check if everything is going well, because if anything goes wrong, then someone will have a high price to pay moneywise. One example is the paint. Is it the right color? Always check this, because paint shops have tens of thousands of different colors, and it takes a little mistake to ruin your design. Or maybe there are things that can go better? Sometimes it's also the client that wants something else on the last minute. An interior decorator hates it when that happens, because it is always going to weaken the concept of the interior stylist. For example, if the concept was black & white and the client decides that something has to be painted blue, you'll get a totally different ambiance: 3 colors instead of your black & white concept. Black and white with a nuance it'll become! One of my colleagues for example got to hear that some cupboards were delivered in half-shining black instead of high-shine black. Fortunately for her it wasn't a big difference, but drastic changes can ruin the concept of a design, but of course, the client is the king, and as long as he is happy, everything's back to where it should be.

Thanks to:

http://www.interieur-tips.nl/ - Decoration Ideas for The Netherlands