4 Tips for Creating a Family-Friendly Living Room

Tips for Creating a Family-Friendly Living Room

Do you remember your parent’s living room that had an elegant delicate glass collection on a cocktail table. Paired with a pristine white carpet? One that was cleaned with tender love and care every week?

The same living room probably also had silk upholstery pulled tight over armchairs. Most definitely had balloon shades that puffed at the top of windows.

In most cases, the living room became a space where children were never allowed to step into – in fact, the only people who went in there were guests!

If you have a young active family, you shouldn’t consider decorating your apartment like Alder apartment homes or The Well Condos (mywellcondo.ca). However, that doesn’t mean that you should altogether give up and leave your sitting room looking some day-care center. The best solution is to find a middle ground that offers you comfort, beauty, and sophistication. All at the same time. Yet be able to withstand everything your kids throw at it.

If you don’t want to become a version of your mother, here are a few family-friendly design tips that will help you.

Consider Your Lifestyle

A beautiful room should take into account all the activities that your family is involved in, or it will end up looking like something from Grandma’s no-go living room. Instead, consider incorporating sturdy decorating styles that will stand up to slobby spouses, unwieldy pets, and even sibling food fights! Consider everyone in your household and decorate accordingly; one way of doing this is checking stain colors on the couch before choosing a hue.

Go for an Easy Look

A clean, yet comfortable and casual look is what you should be looking to achieve. For example, stay away from couches that have skirts – likely to attract everything from dust bunnies, pet hair to dirty shoe prints. Instead, go for couches and chairs that have exposed legs.

Do the same when choosing tables, meaning that you need to avoid fabric-covered tables that your kids will eventually tug and pull everything on top crashing down.

Contemporary-looking vintage items have a better survival rate in a home with kids than precious, pristine new pieces. Whatever your decorating preference, choose a style that’s easy to maintain – when kids arrive, who has the time to dust tiny trinkets, comb fringe, or even primp curtains?

Don’t Buy the Cheapest Furniture You Can Find

One thing you should expect is that your new cushy reading chair will be transformed. You’ll find that it will turn into some sort of indoor trampoline.

At the same, you should always buy the best furniture within your price range, as paradoxical as it sounds. It’s best if you’d purchase solid, heavy furnishings that are constructed from kiln-dried hardwood, corner-blocked, glued, and screwed.

In the process upgrade your couch and chair cushions to spring down, which also has the added benefit of holding its shape.

Your pieces will end up standing up to a couple of years of abuse, and you can reupholster them once your kids are older.

If you choose cheap furniture, you will likely end up with battered, broken pieces taking up valuable space in some corner of your home, something you would want to avoid if you are living in a place like the Eighth & Grand luxury apartments in Los Angeles.

Make Space for Your Children

Create areas in your home’s common room for kids to play. In fact, part of making your home as family-friendly as possible is welcoming your kids and their stuff into your shared spaces as an alternative to sending them down to the basement or up to their bedrooms. Keep your furniture to a minimum while your kids are younger to give them room for play.

How do you make your living room family-friendly?

Let me know, til then–cheers m’deres!