Worst Living Room Designs

The living room is the heart of the home, and should be a space where you and your family can relax, and where you can entertain guests in style. Sometimes, things don't go to plan, and you can end up with a horrendous mish mash of unflattering styles that will make guests run screaming. Check out the pictures below for some of the worst living rooms in existence.

Would you want to sit in here?

The owners of this room have tried to use a red feature wall to tie the room together, but only succeeded in making it dark and unwelcoming. If the fireplace was painted white it would help to prevent the red from overwhelming the room, but the choice of chintzy sofas and gold-coloured furniture and accessories means that even with a better standard of decor, the modern wall colouring clashes horribly with the heavy traditional furniture. It's vitally important that you make sure that furniture such as sofas, coffee tables and sideboards match the style of the room.

This room is suffering from pastel overload

Everyone knows that it's important to make sure that colours are complementary, but this room takes this way too far with a stifling reliance on dated pastel shades, paired with some furniture choices that could charitably be described as 'unusual'. Check out the bizarre soapstone coffee table with its matching detailing over the window. The decoration could easily be toned down by replacing the coffee table and side table with solid timber pieces, and by choosing a sofa in a neutral tone that will not overwhelm the eye.

This room gets everything wrong

The combination of dated vinyl flooring and scruffy-looking stencilled walls makes it impossible to furnish this room stylishly. The floor should be carpeted, taken back to the floorboards or laminate flooring should be installed, while the complex shapes of the wall need to be toned down, ideally with a white or ivory toned paint scheme. The position of the furniture really doesn't help - have you ever seen a desk so narrow and in such an awkward position? By experimenting with furniture position you can achieve harmony, even in a room as unusually shaped as this. It's worth taking the time to look at a range of coffee tables, desks and console tables and planning the scheme of the room.

Just in case these tasteless rooms have sapped your will to live, let's leave on a high note.

This room makes the most of its small size
by keeping things simple

By pairing the unusual and potentially overwhelming red tiled floor with simple white walls and white-upholstered rattan furniture, a truly relaxed environment has been created. Remember, simplicity succeeds much more often than an over complicated design. If it's getting complicated, chances are that it's going off course.

There's a great article by Nina Campbell on the BBC Design Inspiration site that provides a step by step guide on how to make the most of your room and avoid making blunders like the ones above, so if you're about to redecorate, make sure you check it out before you start.