The living room is the hardest room in the house to get right, because it is asked to do the most jobs at once. It has to look composed to a visitor, absorb the mess of an ordinary Tuesday, seat more people than usually sit in it, and work equally well at ten in the morning and ten at night.
Most living rooms fail on layout rather than on taste. The sofa is pushed against a wall it doesn’t need to touch, the rug is a size too small, and the lighting is a single fixture in the ceiling doing work that three lamps should share. The ideas here start there — with arrangement, scale and light — before they get to cushions.
Most rooms decorated for Christmas have the same three proportion problems. The fixes are free, and they matter more than what you hang on the branches.
The single most common mistake in living room layout, why it happens, and the two rules that tell you what size to buy instead.