When it comes to decorating your living room, you may face a challenge when blending traditional and modern design elements. While a living room furnished with a classic leather three-piece and shaggy rug may interest you, you must consider what this will look like when contrasted with the necessities of your modern lifestyle — smart televisions, speaker systems, etc. Your ability to combine these elements will ultimately dictate how well your room is designed.
The way to overcome this problem is to refrain from designing your whole room with classic décor, and instead opting for a combination of classic and modern decoration items. You can still have your grandiose, studded furniture, but you should combine this with design pieces that will offer your room a subtle kick into the 21st century, whether this is through the use of fabrics, colours or shapes. Here are just a few suggestions on how you can easily combine modern and traditional elements in your living room.
Natural light
While you can make an effort to choose the perfect lamp to illuminate your room in the night-time hours, the importance of natural light entering the room in the daytime cannot be underestimated. The issue is that if your living room is on the ground floor, this can leave you and your whole room visible to anyone who may walk past, which isn’t great for privacy or security.
Investing in a high-quality set of shutter blinds for your window will not only solve this problem, but will also provide a stylish covering for the interior of your windows. Shutters of Distinction offers kiln-dried wood shutters that can be custom fitted to the size of your window. Their classic wood look will provide a traditional design element to the room, while their functionality and reliability is very much modern.
The classic sofa
If there is an area of your living room that you should think about imposing a classic design on, it’s your sofa. The impact that a beautiful sofa can have on your room is immeasurable — it will no doubt be the centre piece of your room, and with good reason. A classic Chesterfield three-seater sofa would be the perfect way to introduce an element of sophistication to the room for you to base the rest of your décor around, and a matching chair certainly would not hurt.
The Chesterfield sofa is often associated with its traditional oxblood red colour, but while this colour is a brilliant choice for any room, being bold with your colour selection could be the perfect way to bridge that gap between classic and modern. These Chesterfield sofas from Sofas by Saxon are available in a comprehensive selection of colours to cater to any room style — the modern-styled electric blue colour is particularly vibrant, and offers a fantastic modern twist on a classic piece of furniture.
Modern flooring
While wooden flooring is inherently classic, a stripped-wood colour can offer a very modern spin. Pale colours encourage a minimalist décor in a room, with creams, browns, and tans working well to create a bare but cool feel within a space. The problem with this is that it can leave the room feeling a little too vacant, which will make the area seem colder in the winter.
Laying a rug in your living room is a great way to affect the perception of a room, whether it is the room’s size, colour, or style. Choosing a rug large enough to encompass all of your primary furniture will make the space appear more tightly knit and intimate, which may be exactly what you need if your furniture is classically styled. This handy guide from The Rug Company will explain the theory in more detail and allow you to tailor your rug placement based on the look you’re trying to achieve.
Following these simple and effective tips will allow you to combine your favourite aspects of classic and modern design without experience a clash of styles.
