When choosing living furniture, most people will choose the furniture they like irrespective of the décor or the general furnishings of the room. They may see a lovely sofa with chairs to match, or a sectional unit that they can switch around as the mood takes them. However, few take the whole look of the room into consideration, or take a holistic view of furnishing their living room.
If you are unsure what this means, then take a themed room into consideration, such as an Egyptian or Wild West theme. The home décor, furniture accessories and even the carpeting or rugs are chosen with the theme in mind: that is the meaning of taking a holistic approach to living room furniture.
Your living room need not be furnished and decorated to a specific historical period, but should at least appear to be matched and perhaps follow a certain theme in terms of color or period. For example, Amish furniture looks best in a plainly decorated room, and would look out of place with lush drapes, heavily patterned carpets or event brightly painted walls.
Mission Furniture Style
If you decide on mission furniture, then wooden flooring would look good, with plain or lightly patterned rugs to absorb sound and prevent that reverberation or booming you can get with all wood flooring and plain walls. Curtains or drapes, wallpaper and rugs absorb sound waves, so that you can’t hear everyone talking anywhere in the house.
You may decide on a color theme that could involve either matching shades or contrasting primary colors. Alternatively, you may prefer a combination of wood and leather: solid wood occasional and cocktail tables, and leather sofas and chairs, whether individual pieces or sectionals. Let’s have a look at some options based on leather upholstery combine with solid American woods such as maple, oak and cherry.
Stickley Furniture Leather Sofas
Stickley Furniture offers the Stickley Craftsman Leather range, in black, white or traditional brown leather. The firm’s Bradford sofa, with 103 inches of gorgeous black leather offering 4 seats with separate cushions, along with a loveseat and separate armchair, will look fabulous in a living room decorated with white walls, pale wooden floors with a large black and white rug, and with occasional pieces that match the black and white theme.
You could purchase originals or prints of modern art abstract or sketches in black and white and marry these with lighting consisting of modern shades over brushed or polished aluminum lamps – pr stainless steel if your prefer.
Reproduction Sheraton Sofas
Alternatively, if you prefer more color in your rooms, a gorgeous reproduction Sheraton settee in burgundy and cream would look fabulous in a sitting room decorated in an old English style, with deep red and ecru flocked wallpaper and a beautiful pure wool off-white carpet. You can also purchase separate arm chairs and sofas with this living room furniture from the Southwood Furniture Corporation.
However, irrespective of whether you prefer black and white or traditional earth colors, for a truly holistic approach to your living room furniture and furnishes you must also take the accessories and accent pieces into consideration. These include occasional pieces of furniture, rugs, lamps, candlesticks and even paintings and mirrors for your walls.
Enlarge Your Living Room with Mirrors
Mirrors can add an extra dimension to your carefully decorated and furnished living room, and Carvers’ Guild offers a wonderful range of decorative mirrors that will suit any room decor: whether decorated in a black and white theme with black or white leather upholstery, or in a more traditional fashion with traditionally upholstered sofas and loveseats.
Carefully placed mirrors not only offer a unique approach to home decor, but can also make a smaller living room look larger. By arranging the angles of reflection of a number of mirrors, you can not only make the best of the more interesting components of your living room décor, but also make the room appear much large than it is. You can use lighting along with mirrors to enhance this effect.
There are many other accent pieces that can be use to complement your living room furniture, and also add to the look of the room, or even its theme if you prefer to have themed rooms. Ignoring the obvious Egyptian statues, African masks and Native American artifacts for the more obvious themes, those preferring more modern themes can use chess sets and tables, figurines, lamps, trays and boxes to accentuate the decor of their living rooms.
Taking the Holistic Approach to Living Room Furniture
In order to a take a holistic approach to living room furniture and furnishings, you should first decide on the fundamental decorative style you wish to adopt, and then choose the most appropriate color scheme and wall decor that fits in with your decision. Once you have a rough idea of the colors involved, and the general period of furniture you will require, you can select that furniture from the large selection available from American furniture companies such as Stickley, Southwood, Sherrill and Simply Amish.
Make your selection of furniture, choose rugs to suit your overall decorative theme, and then the lamps, mirrors and other accent pieces. You can put all of these together to create a fabulous living room. A holistic approach to living room furniture involves more than just furnishing, but also an appreciation of accessories an accent pieces such as occasional tables, curio cabinets, rugs and more – but it is well worth the work involved.