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If you live in an apartment or small space, you may know the struggle of finding places to keep your personal belongings. Maybe you have too many things and not enough places to fit everything.
Space is a precious commodity, and making the most of the available space to your small living room furniture is essential for an organized and comfortable life. Mary Lee Smyth, La-Z-Boy’s interior designer in Kingston, knows a thing or two when living in a small space.
“I used to live on a houseboat and everything seemed more than they were. But I found some pretty nifty ways to accommodate my belongings in my space, which I use for any of my clients looking to maximize their small living rooms as well,” she says.
There are many furniture stores in Ottawa and Kingston that sell small-space living room furniture. However, at La-Z-Boy, we sell furniture with quality materials that will help keep your living space looking good for a long time.
In this article, we will explore effective strategies for your small living room furniture, like maximizing and adding storage to your space, with the help of a real interior designer.
In this Article…
- Evaluating Your Space
- Thinking Vertically Instead of Horizontal
- Using Multifunctional Furniture
- Shelves Are Your New Best Friend
- Getting Creative with Your Small Living Room Furniture
- Going Beyond the Living Room
1. Evaluating Your Small Living Room Space
One of the first things you should be doing when trying to maximize your living space is evaluating the area you’re working with. But, what does this mean you ask?
Well, by evaluating, we mean taking inventory of what you have and asking yourself if this is something you need. It also means scoping out every corner of your room to see what can be taken advantage of.
Maybe there’s a nook that isn’t being used, or there isn’t a living room shelf in sight. You may be in your space the most out of anyone, but sometimes after living in a certain place for so long, we tend to naturally blind ourselves to the potential our space can have for other ideas.
It is also best practice to go through some of your belongings and throw items you no longer find joy in. If you’re moving into a new place that might be smaller than your last, you might’ve already done this. The important question to ask yourself is how many times do you use this item? Do you use it a lot? Once a week? Once a Month? Once a year? This can help determine where you place it.
Sorting and purging your items is always great, but you’re not here to read about going through the Marie Condo method. Although decluttering is a great step to making more space in your home. Organize your items from most used to least used and put them where you’ll remember them.
2. Thinking Vertically Instead of Horizontal
Now, you might be looking at your space and asking yourself, “Where is all of this going to go, this place is too small!” Well, perhaps you may not be taking advantage of all your space…
Instead of thinking of the floors and furniture to add your things, you could be using your walls as living room storage as well. Thinking vertically entails adding personal belongings to places like shelving units, to help free up the space below your hips.
“Sight lines in a room are very important,” Mary Lee says. “If you are planning to add shelving, it is important to not add too much above the eye line, because it may come across as too cluttered in our heads.”
Tricking your mind into thinking there is more space than there is is important when maximizing the space in your home. Anything below your shoulder or your eye line helps the brain to not register items taking up so much space, according to Mary Lee.
Thinking vertically also helps when adding framed photos or wall art to your space. To learn more about adding Wall Art to a Living Room, take a look at this article.
3. Using Multifunctional Furniture
Adding multifunctional furniture to a small living room is a great way to help maximize and add storage. Many living room furniture items help contribute to bringing in additional storage space.
Mary Lee says, “As long as you have air, you have space and places to put things.” what she means by this is adding what you can to furniture with storage included. For example, a loveseat with a built-in centre console can help store linens, TV remotes and video game controllers.
Multifunctional furniture also doesn’t need to be solely for storage either. Some furniture pieces like La-Z-Boy’s Leo Ottoman, can be used as not only extra storage, but also a footrest, extra seating for guests, and even a coffee table when the top side is flipped over.
This means your ottoman can be used for four different things, which is great when living in a small space.
4. Shelves Are Your New Best Friend
Going off of the two previous sections, thinking vertically and adding new furniture into your space go hand-in-hand, and that includes adding more storage to your space with a living room shelf.
Living room shelving units or floating shelves are a great way to help reduce the amount of things you have in a given area. Storage shelves with doors are also great as well, since they can be tucked away, or put on display if the doors are made of glass.
Instead of wondering where all your collectible items will go, you can sufficiently display them using your shelving units. If you have tons of books, your favourite reads can now have a cozy place to stay whenever you want to show people your collection.
Media units can also work in this manner as well. Mary Lee points out a great collection from La-Z-Boy’s Hammary furniture called Structures.
5. Getting Creative with Your Small Living Room Furniture
Now, we’ve talked about getting new furniture for your space, but maybe there are some pre-existing pieces that you could take advantage of as well.
As Mary Lee shares that you need to think vertically and horizontally, she also encourages us to look underneath. But what does underneath actually mean?
Well, if you have a stationary sofa, you might notice that the bottom of the frame isn’t touching the ground. Instead, it stays at least 3 or more inches away from it, which could create a nice place to store more things!
“I use the bottom of my sofa to store things like Christmas decorations and other things I don’t use every day,” she says.
Another way to keep things creative is repurposing furniture into something else. Upcycling is a practice that is getting more and more popular as the years go by. Instead of throwing out unused pieces of furniture, you can turn them into something new and repurpose them.
For example, you could transform an old cabinet by adding a new splash of colour to it and adding things like glasses to make it into a mini bar. There are several things you can change and turn into something new. Just think outside the box and let your imagination go wild!
6. Going Beyond the Living Room
Sometimes a living room can handle so much, which is when we look to other places in your home to add living room storage as well. One scenario that could occur is having a lot of framed photos and not having enough space to put them together.
One thing Mary Lee suggests is adding them to a long hallway or stairway if you have a two-story home. “I had this one client that had many photos and didn’t know where to put them. She absolutely wanted them displayed so I added them all around the vertical wall in her stairwell, so not only could people see them, but they could see them up close, front and center!”
You can also add living room furniture with storage outside of a living room! Sounds a little bit odd when you think about it but storage items like a chest can act as a bench in a front hallway and a place to store extra shoes when they are not in use. Now you’ve created another space other than your closet to store items.
If your furniture is bleeding into other places, however, you can also help mitigate the space by adding a small living room sofa with small living room chairs. While smaller living room furniture may lead to less space for guests, this can help with creating division between your living and dining areas.
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What's Next?
After reading this article, you now have a more comprehensive idea of how to maximize and add more storage to your living room.
While you’re taking a look at furniture stores in Ottawa, you may also consider La-Z-Boy as an option. La-Z-Boy also has a wide selection of high-quality and comfortable furniture that will fit in any type of living space. No matter where you decide to shop for furniture, whether it's La-Z-Boy or elsewhere, it's crucial to ensure that you are properly fitted to your seating.
Take a look at our subsidiary lines from Hammary, American Drew or Kincaid, to see what kind of occasional furniture for your small living room best interests you.
You can start shopping by visiting any of our showrooms located in Ottawa or Kingston, or you can schedule a visit online before coming in.
Our design consultants are always eager to lend a helping hand. Take advantage of our interior design services to see how our furniture can fit in your home.
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