How to Keep Your Living Room Looking Top Notch for Years
Your home is your castle, and it says a lot about you. When you invite people into your home, you want them to be impressed by its style and cleanliness. In order to achieve this, no room is more important than your living room.
Your living room is usually the first room that guests interact with. They will form their first impressions as they sit on your furniture and chat. Keeping your living room looking right doesn’t have to be difficult. Just follow these steps.
Take Care of Your Furniture
Good quality, nice looking furniture can be expensive! You don’t want to have to replace it every couple of years to keep your living room looking nice. So, you need to maintain it.
First step is to avoid damaging it. As much as possible, keep feet off the furniture. Bare feet can be acceptable depending on the upholstery, but shoes need to stay off. Don’t allow people to throw themselves onto your furniture.
This can lead to unnecessary wear and breakage. Try to avoid eating in your living room. Spills can easily stain your furniture.
Second step is to perform maintenance. If your upholstery gets torn, repair it immediately. This will prevent the tear from growing. To keep your cushions comfortable, you should fluff them regularly.
If screws come loose or something breaks, fix it as soon as possible. Even if the furniture is still functional while broken, you need to fix it. Broken furniture looks bad. You want to make sure that you properly care for wood furniture in order to keep it looking nice. You can protect your wooden furniture by using wood polish. This will keep it looking new for years and prevent scratches.
Clean Regularly
It doesn’t matter how nicely you decorate if you don’t keep your living room clean. You should regularly wipe down surfaces to remove any accumulating dust and dirt. Pay special attention to wooden armrests.
Hands secrete oils that can damage a wood finish over time. Keep your carpet looking fresh with regular vacuuming.
An often-overlooked aspect is the windows. You can have a spotless living room, but if your windows are dirty, it gives a dirty ambience. You want to have a clear view of the beautiful world outside. Wash your windows with a cleaning solution and a microfiber cloth for best results.
Avoid Sun Exposure on Fabric
Natural light is great for humans, but bad for fabric. Allowing the sun to directly hit your furniture is going to cause the fabric to fade. Try to place your furniture where the sun’s direct light won’t reach it.
If this is unavoidable, install curtains that filter the light but don’t entirely block it. Feel free to open these curtains when you are using the living room but close them when you leave.
Touch Up the Paint
Over time, the paint on your walls is going to fade, it may even start to peel. As you rearrange your paintings and pictures, you’ll leave holes in the wall. And as much as you tell them not to, your kids are going to touch the walls and leave grimy handprints. Fortunately, this can be fixed relatively easily.
Start by using a wall patch kit to cover any holes in your walls. Next, sand any areas that are beginning to peel. Finally, give your wall a fresh coat of paint.
Repeat as needed. Most homes use white walls, but you may wish to change the color. A darker color won’t appear to get dirty as quickly and can give your living room a more intimate and elegant feeling.
Feature Wall
A great way to make your living room pop is to use a feature wall. A feature wall is a wall that is designed to stand out from the others. But you can’t just use any wall.
You want to pick the wall that naturally draws the most attention. Using a different wall will make your living room visually uncomfortable because your eyes will be drawn to two different areas at the same time.
You can create a feature wall simply by painting that wall a different color or by using wallpaper. Or if you are getting creative, you can use wood paneling or stone tiling.
Hide Cords
Your living room might have a lot of electronics. It can have lamps, computers, massage chairs, couches with electronic features, tv’s and much more. This means that you can have a lot of cords running around the room.
Unfortunately, this can look really messy. Try to place your electronics close to outlets so that the cords don’t need to stretch across the room. If you do have to run a cord across the room, try to use the furniture to cover it up. Not only will this improve the rooms look, but it will reduce the tripping hazards.
Carpet Cleaning
Of course, you should be vacuuming regularly. That’s part of the regular cleaning mentioned earlier. But at least every year, you should consider having the carpets professionally cleaned.
There is some dirt and grime that vacuums won’t remove from your carpet. Without a professional cleaning, this will eventually lead to stains in your carpet along the common paths of travel.
A professional cleaner’s machines will give your carpet the thorough scrubbing it needs. It may cost you, but it is cheaper than replacing the carpets and is a great way to get rid of stains.
Seal Hard Floors
Hardwood floors are beautiful and very elegant. They are also very expensive, and it doesn’t take much to scratch them. All it takes is a careless move of the couch and you will have a deep score on your gorgeous floor.
You can prevent this by putting down a protective sealant on your floor. This sealant acts as a clear barrier between your floor and your furniture. Over time the sealant will wear away so you will need to get it redone every few years.
You want a home that you can be proud to show off. When guests enter your home, they should feel comfortable in your well maintained ambient.
By following these suggestions, you will find that it is much easier to keep your house looking nice. Additionally, your regular maintenance will save you money in the long run.
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