Color Choice: Red Living Room Ideas

From your color choice and what to do with the walls, to the seating and the decor pieces, here are red living room ideas to style your space just like an interior designer.

Color Choice

Dark vs Light: When it comes to styling your living room in red you’ll have the choice of going either with a dark palette of reds or a light one. A dark red living room will feel romantic and intimate – but also smaller, and cozy. While a light red color scheme will feel brighter, and more spacious.

Adding Another Color: An all red color scheme is one way to go. But you can mix it up a bit by adding in another color to your design. A red and brown living room is a popular choice. Other good color combos include matching red with grey, with green, or with gold. A red and black living room combo strikes a bold statement.

Removal: To really build a strong color scheme in your living room you need to get rid of pieces that go against the color(s) you choose. Unless you are going for an orange and red color scheme, you need to take out that orange pillow/blanket/candle stand. If you are going for a green and red color scheme but have blue pieces around – that messes it up. Pieces that are not in line with your color choice will stand out, take away from your styling, and kill the color scheme you are using. So it is important to pay attention to what pieces you use.

What to do With the Walls

Three Options

You have three options when it comes to the walls in your living room.

1) Paint them all in red just like in picture (1) – you are really making a statement here.

2) Paint only one wall red and the rest in a neutral color like white, cream, brown, or grey. This one wall will be your accent wall, it will become a focal point in the room just like in pictures (2) and (3).

3) The last option is to have all the walls a neutral color. This creates a blank canvas – letting you colorise the room through using red decor pieces, and furniture.

The Curtains

If you go with neutral colored walls or with an accent wall of red, then a way of adding a splash of red to your walls is through using red curtains (4). When you draw your curtains at night, they fill up a lot of the wall space. So they really do add to the styling of the room. If you go with red walls and want to have red curtains, take some time to pick out the right shade of red. You want the curtains to stand out a bit from the red walls, so pick a red shade that is either darker or lighter than the wall color.

Art Pieces

One other way of adding some red to your walls is through hanging up art pieces. Red art ideas include flower prints, or frame a decorative piece of fabric. Or go with a neutral art piece (like a black and white, or vintage photograph/graphic – something without any color) and put it in a red frame to match it with your living room color scheme.

The Focal Point of the Room

The seating area, around the coffee table, is usually the focal point of a living room. Some ideas on styling in red here include:

The Couch – Go with a a red couch, or a neutral color couch but decorate it with red pillows and a red blanket (5).

The Coffee Table – If you have a red couch – not much needs to be done here as it can be overpowering. Maybe go with a neutral colored coffee table with red area rug underneath. Or if you have a neutral colored couch then a red coffee table works just like in picture (6).

Decor Pieces

Some red decor pieces that you can add to your living room style include:

Candle stands
Table lamps (8)
Storage containers
Check out the shelves in picture (13) in my post here. The back of it is painted in yellow which makes it a statement piece in the room. Because the walls are mint the yellow really pops. So if you didn’t paint the walls red then a cabinet with a red background could really stand out. 1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8