Cosy Christmas Living Room – 3 Top Tips to Get the Look

How to Create a Cosy Christmas Living Room

Although our living room is a good medium sized space that allows for plenty of living in for our little family of two adults and two small children – it’s dimensions of 11 x 20 feet also mean that it’s a rectangular shaped room. Rectangular shaped living rooms are far from unusual, however add to this shape the fact that each of our living room’s four walls have their own features to contend with – two walls have doors, on opposite sides of the room, one wall has a very large window and the last has a fireplace and stove – and so I have myself a space that needs some thought when deciding on its interior design.

Creating a space that’s both inviting, comfortable and functional, takes a little practice. And boy did I practice. Thankfully I’m happy to report that this Christmas I feel I’ve created a ‘Cosy Christmas Living Room‘ and I’m here to share all I’ve learnt and help you get the look with these five top tips:

1 – Decide on a Focal Point (or Two!)

Your end goal is to create a ‘Cosy Christmas Living Room‘ and so deciding on a focal point will help you make that start. Here are two focal point examples taken from our living room:

Christmas Tree: Making your Christmas tree the focal point makes complete sense. Why put all that effort decorating it, just to hide it in a corner? Go big or go small, natural or fake, your choice of tree is completely up to your style, the style of your living room and also the height of your ceiling.

In our living room, as you enter the room via either of the doors, your eyes are first drawn to our Christmas tree. It’s placed near plug sockets which makes it functional when plugging in the lights, doesn’t hinder the heat from the rooms radiator, nor screen view when it’s movie time. Placed a safe distance from, but next to our fireplace, it creates warmth and that cosy christmas feeling I adore. And speaking of warmth that brings us on to our second focal point.

Fireplace: If you have a fireplace, or stove, or like us, a stove set within a fireplace then make the most of it. Of course it’s a glorious sight when lit, but chances are you’re not going to light it every day, and even if you do – not every hour of the day. So then next best thing to is to illuminate it. And illuminating it at Christmas to create a focal point is very easy as there are a number of decorations that are either designed to light up or will with a small addition of fairy lights.

In our living room, I purchased a extra large fabric star, filled it with battery powered fairy lights and placed it on top of the fireguard. It adds to the cosiness of the room and replaces the warm glow of the stove when it isn’t lit.

2 – Create a Cosy Christmas Living Room by Moving Your Furniture

There’s no doubt the furniture in living and sitting rooms around the world are moved about once the Christmas tree comes out from storage or back from the local farm – an armchair here, a side table there. But remember you don’t have to stop there and in most circumstances you can move all your furniture to suit your need of a cosy Christmas living room. Sofas don’t have to be pushed against walls, armchairs and their matching footstools can be split. In fact depending on the size of your room, you can create a completely new zone – a Cosy Christmas Zone!

In our living room, I moved our navy velvet 3-seater sofa at an angle away from the main wall. Facing it towards our Christmas tree, and at an angle to see our screen for Christmas movies, I also placed our armchairs to compliment the set up and split our matching armchair and footstool to help seal the cosiness deal.

At the other end of our living room, I set up a cosy reading nook next to our floor to ceiling built-in bookshelves/display unit. This left both doors accessible and ample room for playtime for our two boys. And when they demand more room, I just push the sofa back against the wall, match the footstool with its armchair and heh presto – floor space!

3 – Lighting Sets the Scene and Fairy Lights are Queen

Creating a cosy Christmas living room is very simple to achieve with lighting. If you have lamps, use them instead of ceiling lights. If you have ceiling lights with a dimmer function, make sure to keep it nicely dim. Fairy lights might be cheap but they don’t have to look cheap, they can look really cheerful and they certainly can belong on more than just your Christmas tree! Drape them over your mantel, mirrors or along shelving. Use them to illuminate Christmas garland, or improvise with Christmas decorations like the star I mentioned above. Or you can even bunch them together and place them in an extra large glass vase for instant glow!

In our living room we have two different ceiling lights one over each half of the living room. On the Christmas tree side we have a chandelier that creates a lovely glowing light – we have the option to keep it on or for extra cosiness we keep it off, lighting the room with the lights from the tree, the stove when lit (or our massive glowing star on the fireguard), the fairy lights draped over the mantel mirror and garland, and small battery operated lamp on the footstool. Because the ceiling light on the other side of the room is brighter, we opt to light the room on this side with a table lamp and decorative christmas lights.

Note: Christmas fairy lighting usually comes in three styles – coloured, warm or cool. The lighting we chose for our living room is warm. We usually keep the ‘cool’ theme for outside, where it’s cold!

Remember:

Christmas time is for cosiness and not perfection. My favourite christmas tree decorations aren’t the fancy ones that came with the tree, they’re the ones we’ve chosen as a family, bought on our travels and pieces our little boys have made by hand.
You make your own rules so no keeping up with the Joneses! My advice is knowing where less is more and more is more! You don’t have to decorate every inch of your living room or home for that matter!
Keep it functional. It’s all very well having a beautifully decorated living room but can you actually live in it? Can you put your feet up? Relax? Can your children play? Does the dog have a place to stretch out? If it doesn’t what’s the point?