Living room decorating ideas with posters and wall art

When it comes to furnishing the living room, there are a great many factors to take into account: our personal taste, the style we have chosen, the features of the room and of the view outside, and so on. The task can seem overwhelming or be tackled without the right preparation, all too often with disappointing results.

In this guide we will show you how to decorate your living room with elegance and taste, using a few principles and simple tricks that will help you create the right atmosphere with ease.

We will also point you to a range of art images that you can buy as posters online in a variety of print formats in our gallery, so you can quickly create the living room of your dreams!

1. The role of the living room in home décor

The living room is a very important space in the home and can serve many purposes: it might be where we read a book or rest during the day, watch television in the evening, or entertain guests at parties and special occasions. For this reason, many interior designers regard it as the central space around which the décor of the entire home should revolve.

Living room décor needs to be handled as a coherent project, built on a single overall plan from which every element is then chosen: it is important to understand how to choose the colours for your walls, the furniture, the curtains and, above all, the pictures and wall decoration. All too often, in fact, rooms are planned mainly around the furniture, with pictures only considered afterwards as “fillers” for any empty spaces left over. On the contrary, a room can even be designed around a single large, striking print with an entire wall devoted to it. An effect like this can be achieved, for example, with large landscape posters and prints.

2. How to create the right atmosphere

To properly furnish a space as significant as the living room, you need to keep a great many factors in mind: the size of the room, natural and artificial light, the view outside, our personality, our style and the atmosphere we want to create. Clearly, then, there is no single right way to decorate; instead, everyone can create an original arrangement that meets their own needs and makes their home unique and personal.

For example, some people might want a living room dominated by the relaxing feel of a lazy Sunday afternoon, and prefer images that evoke a sense of calm and wellbeing.

Others, by contrast, might want to bring out the dynamic side of this room to create a lively mood for evening parties or simply to liven up a home that feels too static, following the common thread of other rooms that call for more energetic décor (on this subject, see our guide on how to hang pictures to decorate a staircase). In this case, you can play with warm colours (red, yellow or orange) and vibrant shades to energise the space, as in the images below.

3. Decorating the living room walls

Whether you are about to furnish a home from scratch or want to enrich and refresh a room that is already furnished, pictures and posters can very often be used to add a personal touch to a cold or anonymous room. A good idea is to use photos of family members or important occasions (such as a wedding or the birth of a child) that convey a sense of warmth. If you also want to add a little elegance, you can include more sophisticated images with original subjects in the arrangement, such as the fine art photography we suggest.

Don't underestimate the rules for hanging pictures correctly on your walls, which must follow some very precise guidelines to avoid a sense of visual clutter.

4. Living room décor styles

Here are some more specific tips for decorating your living room in a modern style and in a classic style.

4.1. Decorating a modern living room

A modern interior is defined by pared-back, refined and elegant design, black and white or tone-on-tone colour schemes, and metal for furniture and accessories.

If the flat we are decorating is in the city, an excellent idea is to use city posters and wall art that create harmony with the view outside.

If, for example, we need to furnish the small spaces of a studio flat, or want to enrich a room without drawing attention away from the space as a whole, keeping an even balance between its elements, we can decorate with several small pictures or posters full of detail to catch the viewer's interest. In this case, food posters and wall art are a great choice to set the mood for dinners and aperitifs.

To shake up a living room that feels anonymous and dull, a bold choice could be to seek a contrast of styles by using classical images that still manage to blend with the rest of the arrangement.

Now let's look at how to approach a classic-style living room.

4.2. Decorating a classic living room

If we have a classic-style living room, the atmosphere we want to create is probably warm and welcoming, with the wooden furniture typical of shabby chic décor or of the Provençal style. To decorate the walls, then, we should turn to nature prints and wall art in colours such as green, brown and sky blue, or to flower posters.

To reinforce the warm, welcoming atmosphere, we can choose romantic prints and wall art like the ones we suggest here.

Here too, you can use a contrast of styles to brighten up a room that feels too static or monotonous, making clever use of modern-style wall art.

Remember that you can buy canvas prints and modern prints of the images featured in this guide in our gallery.

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