Top 5 Interior Design Tips for Long and Narrow Living Rooms

When you imagine the living room in your dream home, it usually is large, airy and essentially squar-ish in shape but in reality unless you’ve designed the space yourself, the space you have to work with may be a long narrow room. The biggest challenge of working with long and narrow rooms is to avoid creating a tunnel and make the space comfortable for 5 people as well as 25. Here are a few design ideas to make a long room feel comfortable.

Divide and Conquer

Often the best way to deal with a long room is to divide it into different zones. A formal sofa setting, a bar area and an informal pair of chairs is one way to divide the space on the basis of functionality. Alternatively, your living room design could feature two sofa settings with a low backed bench or daybed between the two so as to keep them separate and yet not create rigid sections. Area rugs and variations in ceiling heights are good ways of dividing the space without using visual screens.

Be Flexible

Portable furniture is a good idea in long living rooms. Having a couple of lightweight chairs or stools enable guests to join in to a conversation around a central sofa or have a more informal conversation at the other end of the room. A coffee table with pull out seating is another good way to have minimal furniture and yet enough to accommodate everyone. 

Float Around

Furniture arranged against the longer walls of the room might make your guests feel like they’re in a train. A better alternative is to arrange your furniture towards the centre of the room and leave walking space on the sides. The ideal minimum width of a walking path should be 30”. Arranging a large piece of furniture such as a sofa perpendicular to the length of the room can effectively divide the space and make it look broader as well.

Stay Soft and Gentle

You may not be able to change the shape of a room but the shape of furniture is well within your control. Long angular pieces tend to elongate rooms and hence should be avoided. Instead choose coffee tables and ottomans that are circular or oval in shape and sofas with soft edges. When playing with a colour scheme for your living room design choose light colours for the length of the room and restrict dark colours and busy patterns to the narrow ends.

Mount it

When designing a narrow living room you may be faced with a situation where you have to choose between having comfortable walking space and tables to display your curios. At times like this consider wall mounted furniture like slim table tops.  Wall mounted furniture looks lighter and visually takes up no floor space thus making the room feel bigger.

Along with these design tips, it is essential to have a good lighting scheme. Lighting up the corners of the room can make it feel warmer and cosier. For rooms with high ceilings, consider a false ceiling or using chandeliers.