Embrace the dark

Don’t automatically assume that light walls will warm the room up. Choosing sumptuous dark colours like a velvet green or a rich deep blue will add drama to which you can add accent lighting and complementary soft furnishings, connecting the different elements of the room and building a sense of a cosy and inviting space.

Focus on fabulous lighting

You’ll want to bring in some amazing lighting. Beautiful lamps and a low, large, crystal centrepiece will create a completely different feel in the room and combined with warm shades on the walls and furnishings, the room will have a magical feel.

Creating a light wall using strings of fairy lights and pictures can be a wonderful focal point for the room.

Soften everything

Choose a soft, rounded sofa style in a plush fabric and a beautiful colour to complement the walls. Add a soft rug on the floor and a natural, bamboo or glass coffee table with interesting books and fresh flowers to complete the look. Throws and cushions, lots of them, are essential to the cosy feeling in the room.

Create a beautiful scent

Spend some time choosing a scented candle and reed diffuser that you love, something with a rich, deep fragrance that invokes feelings of warmth – perhaps using deeper fragrances like cinnamon or mahogany. As you enter the room the scent will lift your spirits and warm your soul.

Add warmth with flames

If you don’t have a working fire in the room, recreate that cost feeling with an inexpensive electric imitation log burner, and add groups of pretty candles in warm creams on mirror tiles around the room. The flickering flames will create a relaxing mood for warm and cosy evenings in your living room.

Your living room should be a retreat at the end of a day outside in the cold, and there are easy ways using light and soft furnishings to create a magical feeling to the space that you’ll want to retire to every evening.

Start with the sofa

Your sofa and chairs are probably the biggest items in your living room, and they are probably the items that are dating the room most. Swap these out and you will find you are starting to create the vintage look but with a modern take. Look for sofas with a fifties or sixties design aesthetic, but that are made brand new to make the most of modern fabrics and finishes (not to mention fire safety standards). Then pair them with complementary, but not matching, comfortable chairs that you can find reconditioned in antiques centres or online.

Find a great coffee table

These are really easy to lay your hands on. Look for something that will match in style to your sofa – steer clear of dark woods or stainless steel and instead look to curves, glass and natural wood finishes. Scour eBay and your local Facebook selling pages to find a piece that you can bring back to life with chalk paint and beeswax.

Look for original lighting

Many antique centres now are rewiring beautiful lamps and pendant shades, due to the spike in demand for original pieces. An original mid-century centrepiece doesn’t have to cost the earth but can transform the look of your room and capture that vintage look you’re going for. Even if your sofa, tv unit and shelves are more modern pieces, you can add accessories which will combine with your vintage lighting to give a completely different feel to your room that you’ll want to show off to your friends.

Scan the archives

Look for inspiration from old movies, pictures of old houses on the internet, even museums and stately homes. Old editions of magazines from the era in which you’re interested are a treasure trove of design ideas and you can then look for several key pieces such as side tables, artwork or accessories that will add to the look and feel of your vintage room.

Whatever your vintage look, don’t feel that you have to stick either to originals or to reproductions to ensure quality and a cohesive look – do your research and be inventive and you’ll find pieces in many different places that will build up your vision.

A fantastic sofa

Positioning your sofa as the star of the show is a great way to not only maximise your investment, but also to unify a colour or design theme in a room. Work with the angles of your room – perhaps you can fit in a gorgeous corner sofa, or a sumptuous velvet oversized piece. Then add a soft sheepskin or faux fur rug, a stunning lamp and a set of gleaming side tables with fresh flowers of houseplants and you will have a real showpiece. Don’t forget to find a selection of beautiful cushions and throws to make the scene even more inviting.

Flames – real or not

You don’t need to have a fireplace to have a fire as your focal point. If you have the space and the funds, then a fabulous log burner can be placed wherever you like in your room. Put it right in the centre and direct everything towards it; or position it in the corner and make sure you have a bundle of blankets and cushions in a blanket box nearby so everyone can get cosy. Invite people in with a comfortable leather armchair and a soft rug underfoot.

If your budget is tighter, then affordable electric log-burner look fires are easily purchased and come in a range of styles, from classic to modern and sleek. Many people design their own hearth around the electric burner and honestly, no-one need ever know it’s not real. And you will always have an economical, environmentally-friendly cosy focal point in your home to welcome everybody in.

A stacked and beautiful bookcase

Fill a wall with a beautiful set of bookshelves and build yourself a wonderful home library. Position armchairs alongside the bookcase, with low coffee tables to hold your mug of something warming whilst you cosy up with a good read. Bookshelves can be a beautiful focal point, and something you and your family can build up over the years. Just remember to keep tidy and organised so that it is not only a pleasure to look at, but a pleasure to use.

Create your own gallery wall

Group your favourite photos, prints and wall hangings together over an entire wall – you’re looking for interest, not neatness here. Gather similar colours together, and ensure larger pieces are interspersed with different size pictures so that the eye moves between them all. Have your sofas and chairs facing the wall rather than in front of them, so that you don’t block your artwork.

It doesn’t have to cost a lot to design a fabulous focal point in your room – just changing the place your eyes go to when you enter a room can have a completely different impact on how you use he space. What’s your favourite thing to spend time doing in your living room?

Classic movies

Few people really understood glamour like old Hollywood. Turn to any of your favourite 40s and 50s movies and you will find beautifully created sets where the characters inhabited a world unlike anything we normally find today. Pause the movie and take notes on the pieces of furniture or design ideas that really stand out – flowing curtains; fabulous tall lamps and vases; crystal bar tables. Whatever it is you love, make a note of it and search for similar pieces online or in your local antiques centres.

Your favourite hotel

What better excuse for a night away than to find great interior design inspiration. Book a room in your favourite boutique hotel and you’ll get the benefit of highly-trained, expensive interior designers who have done the thinking for you! Look out for interesting and unique sofa designs, beautiful flower arrangements, unusual themes to unify a room, and hardworking but beautiful flooring.

Travel the world with AirBnb

Travel around and view the interiors of some of the finest properties in cities around the world… without leaving your sofa. The owners of airBnB properties want to stand out from the crowd so that they can command the best rates and be fully booked year-round. They have done their research and they know what looks good in pictures, and what will give them great reviews in person. But every city will have its own particular identity, and you can get an idea of different trends from Italy to California simply by searching for top-end properties and picking out unique design ideas. Your home will look unlike anyone else’s in your town, that’s for sure!

Look to nature for unique colour pallets

You know those sunsets that take your breath away? Nature knows that the combination of reds, purples, golds and blues sets up a party in the sky. Why not bring that amazing pallet into your home for a tropical feel that will make your living room feel like a far-away place. Or head out to the woodlands – reds, browns and golds come together to create a warm and inviting place that relaxes you and calms you down. Bring that into your home using rich fabrics, natural woods and warm gold or copper lighting to recreate that feeling of natural space.

Wherever you look, make sure your living room speaks to you on a personal level and invites you to spend hours relaxing and enjoying yourself.

It’s hard to translate Hygge, the Danish word for all things calm, natural, reflective, mindful. Stop. Stop, be aware, be present. Think. Enjoy. How to do that through careful design? Here are some great tips for cosying up your décor and making home feel like the safe place where you can escape the pressures of the modern world.

Go natural

Keep your design elements simple, and natural. Unclutter the surfaces and choose pieces that really inspire you, things that you can touch and feel and smell. Let your room breathe with oxygen from fresh green houseplants. Use natural, untreated wood in your shelves and side tables. Keep floors clear and windows minimally dressed so that light and space can flood through.

Warm up your colour pallet and add in some metallics

This is not the time for crisp whites, high gloss and sharp lines. Soften the mood with warm tones, that allow light to shine through without dampening the colour but without the harshness of pure white. Let colour seep through your floors, walls, curtains and soft furnishings. Mix in metallics in your objets d’art, wallpaper and storage. Lighting in a perfect place to provide a metallic finish that will add the modern edge to your soft, warm and cosy room.

Turn your walls into your own gallery

Go back through your phone’s photo gallery, and the old pictures stored on your laptop and in the pages of old photo albums. Which ones do you love? They might be people, or places, or views. Use a quality printing service to turn them into works of art, and arrange them alongside your favourite art and prints to create a collection of artwork unique and special to you and your family. Then get whisked away in your memories when you study them.

Heat it up with faux fur and flames

If you’re lucky enough to have a real fire or log burner in your living room then make that your focal point – not the tv! Position chairs nearby and add soft and cosy throws and rugs for people to relax under or against. Those without a fire can still add warmth using large candles, or even investing in an electric log burner, which have transformed in their style over recent years. Use it when you can and really indulge in the warmth of your space.

Candles and fairy lights

Any room is transformed by good lighting, and to soften a room a collection of twinkly, warm white fairy lights alongside groupings of interesting and fragrant candles provides an oasis of calm and a real sense of escape. Take your lights and candles through every part of your home and into your outside space. The reflections will cast interesting light around the spaces, and your softly scented rooms will lift the mood.

Make Hygge a part of your life and leave your pressures and stresses outside the front door.