Casual Living Room Styles

Living rooms don't have to be the formal affairs they once were, with the overstuffed sofas, expensive lamps and grand window treatments. These rooms in recent years have gone casual, looking more and more like the family rooms of old.

Casual living room furniture has been a big reason why this has happened. Manufacturers have found that casual furniture can really brighten up a home and create a space that gets far more use than the living room of old.

Creating the look you want with casual living room furniture isn't that difficult, if you follow some basic guidelines.

First, the emphasis is on comfort. The furniture needs to be welcoming and above all comfortable. While formal rooms are all about style and statement, you want to create a casual environment that is soft and supple in color, style and design. You want visitors to sink into the casual living room furniture, instantly relaxing and feeling at home.

The space shouldn't be overly loaded with furniture; instead it should feel cozy. Even a cavernous great room can have that casual feeling, if you create sensible groupings of casual living room furniture. Don't be tempted to create a singular seating space in the case of a great room. Break it down visually into one main entertainment space and one or more smaller conversation groupings.

Instead of going with darker, more formal colors, go with neutral tones accented by brighter pillows and walls. Make it lively and energetic, mixing and matching tones and fabrics in your casual living room furniture. Same goes for the walls. Go bright, not dark.

Use area rugs to define the different spaces. Make sure that each piece is inside or at least touching the area rug. This ties everything together visually. In fact, area rugs are one of the easiest things you can do to give a room an instant makeover.

There isn't a single style of furniture called casual living room furniture. Instead, it is more about the ambience you're creating in the room. Think of the ideal vacation home when coming up with design ideas. If you look through home and garden magazines, study what these homes look like. You want to recreate the feeling that you are on vacation or on a retreat. This is what makes a living room feel casual as opposed to formal.

When shopping for the right furniture, balance your efforts between brick and mortar and online stores. Often it's easier to shop online for casual furniture as you can use search words to narrow your search. For example, you can enter phrases like "tropical living room furniture" or "overstuffed sofa" and get just those items. In a traditional brick and mortar store it may take time before you stumble on a casual approach to living room furnishings and even then your favorite pieces may be in entirely different rooms, making it hard to see how they go together.

With online stores you can copy and paste the different pieces onto a single page and print them out to get a better sense of how they tie together.

Keep in mind that when you're trying to create the ideal casual living room space you want to avoid the dark colors, dark woods and ornate embellishments that can make a room seem more formal.

That said, don't avoid color all together. While you can never go wrong with neutral colored stuffed pieces - the sofa, sectional chairs - you can use brightly colored pillows to kick them up a notch. This is also a smart use of your budget since the neutral furnishing never go out of style and should you want to go with something more formal down the road, you only have to change the accents, not the furniture itself.

Creating a comfortable, stylish living room provides a gathering place for you and your family to relax and spend quality time together. It's important to create the look and feel that evokes your lifestyle and invites friends and family to enjoy their time being together.