7 Cool Living Room Wall Designs
When you’re thinking about decorating your living room, stripes are not the first fabric pattern that springs to mind. But, just because stripes are not the norm, it doesn’t mean they can’t be used for a subtle yet stylish effect in the home. Indeed, when done tastefully and in small doses, stripes can turn an otherwise ordinary living space into something truly exciting and vibrant.
Read on to see how…
Striped walls for an earthy atmosphere
This is the easiest of all living room stripe designs, as it requires no trickery whatsoever. Simply by using painted stripes of varying shades across your walls, you can pick up on the flow and sense of movement that’s normally associated with hardwood flooring or natural stone surfaces. Stripes are perfect if you feel that a plain, dark color scheme places too much emphasis on heavy furnishings and thick curtains. The lightness and simplicity of a good paint job will ensure a relaxed atmosphere permeates the entire space.
Darker colors offer a calming buffer against busy furniture shapes
If you have furniture pieces in your living room that are anything from curvy to angular or from sharply angled to aggressively contrasting, striped walls can help create a more uniform and unfussy backdrop.
Natural wood surfaces add warmth to the room
Striped walls offer a nice alternative to plain white or cream – especially if your room has a lot of wooden furniture pieces. Wood is a material that’s used in almost every living room because it offers a sense of natural luxury and warmth, while still providing a blank canvas on which other colors can be applied. However, plain wood is very versatile and allows for several different looks from country chic to modern minimalism.
Stripes can be used as an accent color in small doses against the warm tones of the grains on wood furniture panels or carved ornamentations on coffee tables or sideboards. Just don’t go overboard with the stripe designs, or you’ll end up with an effect that’s too busy and distracting.
Stripes for a modern twist on traditional wallpaper patterns
If you’re looking to inject some drama into your living room but don’t want to paint it one color, then stripes may be the perfect solution. Wallpaper is back in a big way, but why not think out of the box? Unless you have wood paneling or are lucky enough to have uncovered stone walls, your living room will generally be flat-fronted.
But doing something as simple as painting stripes across your wall can give the impression of depth and dimensionality – especially when teamed with furniture pieces that have sleek edges and metallic finishes. Once again, the key to making this look work is to keep the stripes narrow, perhaps just a couple of inches across with varying shades from dark at the top to light at the bottom.
Striped walls as a neutral backdrop for accent colors
One way to ensure you don’t go overboard on your living room furniture purchases is to simply have a plain color scheme and then add small touches of color through accessories or artworks. While this works well if your furnishings are neutral in tone anyway, it doesn’t mean you can’t create a bold statement with distinctive wallpapers.
If you use stripes you can play up, even more, the effect by creating blocks of contrasting colors which, when placed side by side, break up each other’s monotony. You could use a dark shade for one of the stripes and then accentuate it with, perhaps, a fiery orange color. The striped walls will provide an appealing backdrop to this effect without taking anything away from your chosen accent wall.
Striped walls are the perfect way to decorate around flat-screen TVs
Bold colors can become very intense on-screen – especially if they’re placed at angles that reflect light through them. This is why you often see metal surfaces in living rooms next to television sets that are black or mostly black – it gives the illusion of space in any direction you look. But if you want to go bolder than these usual palettes, try painting narrow white stripes across your walls in varying shades.
You’ll be surprised how the effect can pick up any light in the room, creating a subtle glow that’s rather enchanting.
Stripes are always in fashion
The striped wall design is so popular because it works in every season and for both young people looking to create their first place or older homeowners who have lived in theirs for years. It also ensures you’ll never want to change your decor – unless of course, you decide to paint over your stripes. But if you’d like to refresh them at some point they’re very easy to repaint with little cost involved since the idea here isn’t an overall color scheme but rather one that is broken down into strip-like portions.
So go ahead and get creative with stripes, only keep the number of shades next to each other to a minimum of four.
