How to Redesign a Sitting Room in 5 Simple Steps

Whether you’ve flown the nest and become a homeowner for the first time, moving house or have grown bored of the layout of your existing home, the act of redecorating can be daunting. Being faced with a large amount of empty space can open a variety of emotions in all of us, some positive, others negative.

On the one hand, you might be excited about being able to play around and experiment with your space, whereas on the other, you may be worrying about how to fill it. Especially if the room you’re due to redesign is pivotal in the house or exceptionally large, such as the kitchen, dining room, or sitting room.

Particularly if you have plans to redesign your sitting room, you might be wondering how to design a space that will appeal to you and your family members both aesthetically and functionally. Regardless of your style, your sitting room must be a place where members of your household can unwind for the day and spend quality time with each other.

Any interior designer will tell you that there is a fine line when it comes to decorating a room that looks good and works functionally. So, before you start looking at that new leather corner sofa and creating mood boards, arm yourself with some of the simple sitting room redecorating steps outlined below.

Measure Up

Before you can start making any necessary redesign plans for your sitting room, you must first measure your entire space. We suggest that you begin with the basics and record the measurements of all available floor space and wall space. Don’t forget to measure the width, height and diagonal opening of any doorways leading into your sitting room and refer to them while shopping for any furnishings.

The last thing you want is to fall in love with a piece of furniture and then find out that you can’t even get it past your front door. You’d be surprised how many people have been caught out by this simple aspect so ensure that you avoid this happening to yourself by taking accurate measurements of your sitting room’s square footage; you can then use these to support your home décor decisions whether they be furnishings, rugs, or window treatments.

If you don’t fancy committing these measurements to pen and paper, thanks to the digital age we now live in, there are a variety of mobile applications that can help you with this task. Some of the best mobile interior design applications such as RoomScan Pro, Houzz, Havenly and more can offer inspiring interior designers various tools to make redesigning their living rooms easier.

From augmented reality scanning, saving multiple measurements to your phone and the ability to touch your phone against walls to measure, these applications are packed full of useful features designed to help interior designers. Doing your due diligence and using apps like those above will ensure that you don’t waste time or money on furnishings or accessories because they don’t fit as you had hoped.

Understand the Space

As well as being one of the most pivotal rooms in a home, a sitting room is first and foremost meant to be lived in. Therefore, one of the most important things you must decide upon when planning to redesign your living room is how you want your new sitting room to look and that you understand the space available to you.

Before you begin the design process, you should assess how you and your family will utilise your sitting room and the functions you will require from it. Well, it’s all very well having an ornate looking living room that looks like it’s been ripped straight from a high-end home interior magazine, but if you can’t use it for everyday family things, then what use is it?

The beauty of sitting rooms is that there is no right and wrong; it is yours to do whatever you like. For instance, if your family are the types who enjoy reading and conversing in the sitting room, you may decide to group the furniture so that inhabitants can talk freely, or you may want to build a window seat that allows people to read by themselves.

On the other hand, if you have a large family, you may want to consider purchasing a corner sofa, which can seat multiple people yet not overpower the room. If you’d like more inspiration, look at this range of corner sofas from Denelli Italia, which retails a range of corner sofas suitable for any price range, style, and more. For more insight, browse their website or visit their showroom in person to see how their products could help with your sitting room redesign today.

Start Shopping

Furniture can be one of the most significant purchases in a home; therefore, it comes as no surprise that it can be expensive. Especially if you’re moving into a brand-new house instead of redesigning an existing one, it can be challenging to decide which articles to purchase first. When redesigning your sitting room, if you are planning to buy a lot of furniture, we recommend purchasing the larger pieces of furniture first.

Doing so will keep the room from looking disorganised, as you are much more likely to notice the absence of a leather corner sofa than a couple of accessories and keep it looking grounded. Once you’ve got the more significant pieces of furniture in place, this makes it easier to redesign your sitting room as the main components are already in place and makes it easier to pick out more furnishings that complement them.

Make a Mood Board

Before making any essential redesign decisions or opening your wallet, we recommend creating a mood or room board which will enable you to see how specific furnishings will work together. Gather together any flooring or wallpaper samples and pictures of any furnishing you’d like to include in your newly redesigned sitting room and create a mood board; you could even make multiple boards and use them to draw comparisons to see which style you like best.

Doing so will make it easier to see if the pieces of furniture you’ve chosen work well together before you reach into your wallet to purchase them. You may find that in doing this, you will be able to avoid making any design mistakes which might be harder to rectify further on down the line.

Whether you think that the flooring you’ve chosen is clashing with another pattern on the room board or the corner sofa is dominating the space – creating mood boards is a great way to visualise how a room could look without fully committing. Alternatively, you could use mobile interior design applications to do this digitally if you don’t consider yourself a very creative person.

Add Greenery

It can be easy to focus on the main redesign aspects and not the little things when redesigning a room. However, it is just as important to think about the finishing touches as it is the other redesign elements, as this is what will ultimately tie the renovation together.

One of the easiest ways to add finishing touches to your newly redecorated sitting room is by adding greenery. As well as being attractive to look at, plants are known for improving our mood, boosting airflow, and adding life to a room. They are also an excellent option for those who have a tight budget or live in a rental property with strict rules about decorations.