Designer Says Pushing Your Sofa Against The Wall And Hanging The TV Too High Is Why Your Living Room Feels Like A Hospital Waiting Room

Plenty of living rooms look fine in a photo and still never feel cozy. According to the designer behind Cozy DIY Home, the furniture is almost never the problem. It is usually a handful of small habits that are easy to change, and the first one, she says, is something almost everybody does, herself included.

A designer pointing at a living room advice cover next to a bright living room with a green sofa and wooden coffee table

That habit is pushing every piece of furniture up against the walls. Her verdict is blunt: it can make a living room feel more like a hospital waiting room than a space you actually want to sit in. We tend to think wall-hugging furniture makes a room look bigger, but she says it does the opposite and leaves the middle of the room feeling empty, so people end up nearly shouting across it to talk to each other.

She shares her fixes in a video that is worth a look as we head into cozy season.

Pull Everything Off The Walls

Her cure is to build a conversation area. If you have the space, pull sofas and chairs away from the walls, because even a couple of inches makes a difference. She says seating should sit no more than eight to 10 feet apart, close enough that chatting is easy and everyone can enjoy each other’s company.

The rug matters too. At minimum, the front legs of your furniture should sit on the area rug, and even better is having all the legs on it. That usually means buying a rug big enough for the job, which she says solves the problem for most rooms.

Get The Coffee Table Size Right

A coffee table or ottoman that is too small, she says, will make a whole living room feel cheap, even when the sofas are the right scale. The rule she uses with her design clients is simple: the table or ottoman should be about half to two-thirds the length of the couch.

Her own example makes it easy to picture. She has an ottoman about four feet wide and sofas around 88 inches long, which she calls a really nice scale. She also leaves 14 to 18 inches between the coffee table and the sofa, so you can still walk through and reach your coffee without getting up. If a single table is too small, she suggests a pair, such as two little stools or two small tables. She recovered a couple of cheap IKEA stools with fabric and calls it a fun DIY project.

Dress The Sofa With A Pillow Formula

The sofa is the heart of the living room, and she wants it to look like something you can sink into. Her simplest throw pillow formula starts with two 20 by 20 inch pillows, one on either side of the sofa, then adds a lumbar pillow, the rectangular kind. Hers is 24 inches wide and 16 inches tall.

She also likes a trio of pillows that always look good together: one larger scale pattern such as a floral, one textured solid such as a white faux fur pillow, and one smaller scale print. She says you can add even more cushions, which she usually does, and that it comes down to personal preference. Her other advice is to use feather inserts, which she says make cushions look far more high-end. Pick an insert slightly larger than the pillow cover, or, if you are using inexpensive IKEA covers, put two inserts in one cover.

Rescue Saggy Cushions

Even a well-styled sofa looks uninviting if the back cushions are loose and saggy. She says a lot of IKEA furniture, like hers, tends to sag a little after some use. Her first fix is to take the inserts out of the back cushions, fluff them with your hands and put them back.

She also recommends rotating the cushions from front to back every week or two so they wear evenly, and wrapping the inserts in a thinner batting material to add volume right away. If you are shopping for a new sofa, she says to go into the store and sit on it, because sofas feel very different from one another. She loves her IKEA Hallterp sofa, which felt a little firm at first but has softened over the last year and a half, and her family adores it.

Add Lamps And Warm Bulbs

Another thing that can bring on the waiting room feeling is having only one light source overhead and no accent or mood lighting. She says the coziest rooms she has been in have extra lights at seating height, such as a lamp on a table, twinkle lights on a mantel or a light in a centerpiece on the coffee table. Floor lamps, twinkle lights and faux candles all count.

She likes at least three lamps in a room, spread out so they form a triangle and bounce light around in the evening. She also suggests checking the color temperature on the bulb box and looking for 2700K, which she says makes a room feel extra cozy.

Do Not Hang The TV Too High

She says she sees this one all the time and has done it in her own home. Lots of people hang the TV over the mantel, and she says that can work when the mantel is low. Often, though, it is better to use a different wall.

The best practice is to put the TV at eye level, with the center of the screen at about 42 inches. She says you can get away with the center as high as 60 inches, so anywhere between 42 and 60 inches is usually about right. If it has to go over a higher mantel, she suggests a tilt mount so the screen angles downward and is easier to watch.

Give Every Seat A Place For A Cup

Here is her simple test. Sit anywhere in the room and ask whether you can set a coffee cup down nearby. If there is not a surface near every seat, she says, the room will have a hard time feeling relaxing. Small round side tables here and there help, as does keeping the ottoman or coffee table close to the conversation area.

She also says real life needs somewhere to go. Remotes, game consoles, kids’ books and toys all end up in the living room, and a spot for each thing makes the room feel calmer. She likes pretty containers, such as square baskets that sit on the ottoman or larger lidded baskets beside the couch that hold textiles. Furniture with closed storage, like a coffee table with drawers or a console table with doors, does the same job.

Why It Works

Her bottom line is that the living rooms that feel best are not the ones full of expensive things. They are the ones that work for the way the family lives. She is confident any living room can get there, not by replacing everything, but by moving a few pieces around, tweaking small details and picking up inexpensive lighting from IKEA or the dollar store.

For a free weekend project, that is a good list to start with: slide the sofa off the wall, check the rug, measure the coffee table, add two lamps and drop the TV down to eye level. None of it costs much, and she says each step makes a big difference in how the space looks and feels.

Willow and Hearth