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How To Decorate A Family Room

Your family room is a special part of your home, a place where moms and pops really enjoy getting together with their kids to spend their leisure time together. While your family is growing up, it’s often the heart of your home, so it’s important to decorate it so that everyone feels at ease there.

Given that you have to accommodate adults as well as children of different ages, you might think that this could be difficult to achieve; however, there are some clever design tricks that can make it possible for you to create a family area that is welcoming, comfortable, and smart so that everyone feels right at home there. The best ideas are often the simplest, so here are a few hints and tips to help you achieve a fun, welcoming, and relaxing room for all the family in your home.

Color palette

Catering for everyone is best achieved by using neutral colors on the walls, floors, and ceilings in the room. Pale tones will make the space look bigger. Think of this as a backdrop for different accents that you can use in designated areas. When creating a play area, for instance, you can include brighter, primary colors on area rugs, scatter cushions, and storage units. A quieter corner for reading or storytelling can be more muted in tone, while a family viewing area for watching movies benefits from comfortable seating in modest, plain shades.

Doors and windows

When it comes to doors and windows, you can make your family room a little different from other parts of your home. Match the outside of your family room door with other doors in your hallway, but consider treating the inside a little differently. For example, if you want to minimize noise leakage, you can put a simple foam panel on the inside of the door. It’s an easy job to do, and the foam comes in a range of attractive colors, so you can choose a shade to match your décor. This is a brilliant solution if your kids love noisy play sessions or play loud video games. It’s also useful when you are watching a family movie as it reduces the amount of sound filling other parts of your home.

Windows in a family room don’t need swathes of drapes that trail on the floor or blinds with fiddly cords as these are more of a hazard in a space where kids will be active. Instead, choose elegant family room shutters that will produce a clean, streamlined outline of your window shapes and are also adjustable. This way, you can control the amount of daylight coming into the room and create a real movie theater atmosphere when you plan to watch something charming, exciting, or festive together.

Furniture

Bearing in mind that your family room will get a fair bit of wear and tear, choose furniture, fabrics, and wall paint that are durable and washable, where possible. To cater for a range of uses, you’ll find that seating units with built-in storage are a great bonus so that toys can be cleared up easily before bedtime. Add wall-mounted shelves out of the reach of tiny hands to house books, speakers, iPod docks, and DVDs, as well as good old-fashioned CDs and vinyl.

Your viewing space may also be best positioned in a corner so that you can group couches and armchairs together cozily.

Lighting

Good general lighting means that everyone can see clearly across your family room without any shadows. During daylight hours, your window shutters can be opened fully or the slats tilted slightly to avoid too much glare if this should be a problem. Artificial lighting in the evenings can be from a fixed overhead point with perhaps a few pockets of space where task lighting is installed.

For example, in a quiet corner you could add a floor reading lamp and some really comfortable chairs or floor cushions for rest periods in between noisy play. A foldable games table and stackable chairs are ideal if your kids enjoy playing real, as opposed to virtual, board games from time to time. Sometimes the best family fun happens around the games table, just as it often does at shared family meals, especially on festive occasions.

Fit for purpose

Perhaps the most important thing about decorating your family room is to start from the point of view of how it’s going to be used, building in how this might change over time so that your family room “grows up” as your family does.

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