Cozy seating areas can make spacious rooms more intimate.
The most important thing to remember in decorating a joint living room and dining room is to make it visually flow. This will create continuity and allow the eye to flow around the room and not have any breaking points. This type of room is great for throwing parties and gathering with your family, friends and neighbors to share the events in your lives. Often, these combined rooms tend to look like a warehouse or commercial space because of their size, but there are ways to avoid this.
Instructions
1. Paint the rooms the same color. Many people feel that they must only use neutral colors or they will tire of them quickly, but warm tones such as olive greens, toasty brown, burgundy or golden yellow can give the room warmth and intimacy.
2. Decide on the theme and incorporate it in both rooms. For instance, if you want the rooms to be semi-formal, do not decorate one room with cottage type décor and the other with semi-formal accessories.
3. Utilize ficus trees and other large potted plants to give the spacious rooms a homey, more intimate appeal. Sometimes joint living and dining rooms can have the appearance of a large cave and need personal touches.
4. Use heavy drapes or neutral toned window blinds with a cornice or valance. These rooms tend to have many windows and can seem cold if the windows are not covered.
5. Add a gas fireplace to the room to add warmth and create a cozy haven where your family can gather. Features such as a fireplace will give the room a comfortable ambiance and distract from the large spaces.
6. Use flooring in coordinating colors. It is acceptable to use different types of flooring, such as linoleum under the dining room table and carpeting in the living room; just make sure they coordinate and the break in the two patterns is subtle. If you have warm neutral tones in your linoleum or a wood floor for your dining area, then use a taupe, light beige or other warm color for your carpeting.
7. Incorporate large sized furniture in the rooms. This will fill up the space, make it more attractive, and seem less crowded than an overflow of smaller furnishings.
8. Hang large pictures, artwork and mirrors on the walls to coordinate with the large sized furniture and create balance in the rooms.
9. Create two or three seating areas if your rooms are quite large. You can place two beautiful upholstered chairs near each other with an end table between them to create a conversation area or set up an area where family members can play games together in a corner or a section of the room that is not in the walkway. Use rugs to differentiate the spaces even further.
10. Make sure you have adequate lighting for each individual space, whether it is additional table lamps or recessed lighting.
11. Install architectural features, such as columns or arched passageways to make the rooms appear as if they are separate and to give it less of a look of a commercial space.
12. Paint your high ceiling in a shade that is two or three tones lighter than your wall color, if the height makes the room appear cavernous. This will appear to lower it visually and make the rooms seem smaller.
13. Put up crown molding or ceiling beams if you have a high ceiling. This will make the space seem smaller and the room cozier.
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