How to Scale and Decorate an Open Living Space: A Quick Guide

For better or for worse, open floor plans are booming in popularity. Some people love having a wide-open space to work with and light flowing through the house while others prefer smaller and more confined sub-spaces within their homes.

Regardless of which camp you’re in, if you’re dealing with an open-concept space, you need to know how to make it work for you. It can be intimidating at first! Should you be segmenting out spaces or letting the room flow? How can you make the space feel cohesive?

We’re here to answer these questions and give you some useful and actionable tips that can help you make your open-concept house feel more like an open-concept home. Read on to learn more!

Stick to a Consistent Color Scheme

When you have an open floor plan, you kind of have three or more rooms in one. You have the kitchen, dining room, and living room all pushed together into one space. If you also use this space as a home office or children’s play area, that’s even more rooms that you’re trying to fit in a single large room.

This can make things look a bit disjointed. While an “eclectic” look definitely works for some people’s interior design aesthetics, most want to have a cohesive space. A consistent color scheme can give you the consistency you want in a multipurpose room.

You can even play around with different decor styles in each “room” if you use a consistent color scheme.

It’s a good idea to have a “base color” to work with that’s fairly simple (neutrals are great for this). Then you can use accessories to add more visual interest to the space. This also lets you change your color scheme seasonally.

This isn’t to say that you can’t have some mismatched elements, of course. This is just a way to get a consistent “through line” in your home design.

Use Accents to Guide the Eye

When you’re adding in accent colors, use them to guide the eye around the space. Make them focal points.

For example, perhaps you have red accents in your otherwise neutral room. You’ll want one larger red focal point in each space. You could have an accent wall in the living room area and a large red centerpiece on your dining room table.

Find Unique Ways to Divide Spaces

When you’re working with an open floor plan, you need to find ways to designate spaces. It’s better for your workflow, and it will make your space seem more functional. It will also help you decorate later on.

But how can you do that? You certainly can’t put up new walls, and you don’t want to close off the space so much that you lose the benefits of the open floor plan.

Here are some of our favorite simple ways to designate functional spaces within an open space.

Wallpaper

This one won’t work for every open-concept space, but depending on how you set it up, it may work for you. You can use wallpaper to easily define spaces.

Wallpaper is supremely underutilized. It comes in so many unique styles now that there’s a style of wallpaper for everyone. Even if you don’t want to wallpaper an entire room, you can use it to section off a specific space.

For example, perhaps you have a corner that would make a perfect reading nook. You can place wallpaper only around where you’d want the nook to be to mark off the space. This way, it’s distinct but not separated from the rest of the floor plan.

Area Rugs

If wallpaper isn’t your style, but you don’t want any visible physical dividers, use area rugs to designate separate spaces. It’s easy, affordable, and a great way to add more decorative flair to your home.

Area rugs create visual separation, but they don’t block any light. You can still move easily from “room” to “room,” but it’s also clear that each space has its own purpose. You would put one rug under the dining room table, one in the living room, and so on.

Keep the rugs similar (if not matching). Remember, you still want a cohesive space even if you’re breaking it up.

Physical Dividers

If you truly want to divide your space, you can use physical dividers. There are ways to do this that still allow you to keep your space flowy and functional.

First, consider hanging indoor curtains. You can easily pull them to the side when you want to open the space up or pull them closed when you want a separate space. This can be helpful if you use a portion of your space as a home office.

You can also use partitions. There are many different styles of partitions, and some of them even let light through. They’re easy to move to the side when you no longer need them.

Place Furniture Wisely

Your furniture can make a big difference when it comes to visually dividing your space.

Try to create areas with your furniture. For example, you could box in your living room area by placing your sofas, chairs, and entertainment center in a rectangular shape. This creates a small “room.” You can use a similar idea for the dining area.

You can also use large shelves to divide rooms. We recommend using shelves without backs (so you can see through them) to keep light flowing. Tall shelves are also excellent for using vertical space and adding more decor items!

Focus on Storage

Speaking of shelves, you have to be careful with storage when you have an open floor plan. It can look messy quickly.

Use plenty of shelves and drawers. Try to incorporate furniture with hidden or extra storage, like a large entertainment center with plenty of cabinets, or an ottoman that opens up to store spare blankets and other items.

Make Your Open Floor Plan Work for You

It’s true that working with an open floor plan can be tricky, but with a few small changes to your decor, you can create a space that’s both cohesive and functional for each “room’s” individual purpose.

Mix and match these helpful tips to create your dream home.

Do you need some extra decor help? At Serenity Interiors, our interior design experts are ready to help you all the way from the inspiration phase through the finished home design. Schedule a free consultation with us today!

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