Enhance Your Home's Aesthetic: Choosing the Perfect Decorative Accessories for a Vibrant Living Room

Find out how to create a mood board, research trends, and hand-pick personalized home decor accessories that elevate the aesthetic of your living space.

Your home should be a canvas for your creativity. Indulge your passion for interior decoration and create a living space that is as unique as you are. By developing a color scheme, and finding your own style, you can carefully curate the perfect living room, with bespoke home decor items, and personalized home decor accessories.

Create the perfect ambience for you and your loved ones, with a warm and welcoming living room where style is at the center yet comfort is never sacrificed. Learn how to select unique wall decor, table runners, and modern couch pillows, to create a one-of-a-kind living space.

Sign off on your signature style

Maybe you already have a clear idea of your style, or maybe you’re just getting started. Either way, you’ll need to think about your favorite colors, themes, textures, or patterns. What does the rest of your home look like, and how will your living room decor harmonize with and complement the overall vibe?

A mood board is the perfect way to get started. It helps you clarify your vision, drawing together things you love the look of and enabling you to compare, contrast, and combine to create your unique vision. Here’s how to produce a mood board for your new living space.

Choose your format

This could be digital or physical. If you usually browse online for inspiration, a digital format is perfect. There are several tools with which you can create a mood board — Pinterest, Adobe, or Canva are three examples. Whenever you see something you like, save it to your digital board, enabling you to go back in later and start weaving all those threads together.

Or if you’re more old school, get physical. Clip pictures out of magazines, save swatches of fabric or paint samples and create a literal board covered with things that you love.

Pick a color scheme

Using all the colors of the rainbow sounds attractive, but it rarely works well in a living space. Choose two, or maximum of three colors to work with. A color book or color wheel can be a good tool to check that your colors complement each other.

For minimalists, selecting a neutral base can be the perfect setting for a signature color piece to really pop. Those who prefer a more vibrant look may select colors with a strong contrast.

Patterns and texture

Stripes or spots? Floral or geometric? An Eastern or Western influence? The possibilities are endless, but you’ll want to think about the look you’re trying to achieve and how patterns contribute.

Texture matters as well; just think about the difference between a smooth silk pillow and a rustic sackcloth effect.

What’s trending?

You don’t need to follow a trend, but it’s useful to know what’s popular at the moment. Cultural style movements can be hugely influential and help you clarify your vision.

Get inspired by the experts

Think about spaces you love, and why you love them. Draw on the elements that make them so successful and think about how you can incorporate them into your mood board.

Beyond interiors

You don’t need to limit yourself to looking at home decor items. Perhaps a fashion designer uses a fabric you love, or you remember that beautiful set of ancient water pots from a museum you visited on your travels. Inspiration can come from anywhere.

Later on, once you’ve assembled your mood board, you can look at all those beautiful things together. What works and what doesn’t? Select, refine, and distill down to your perfect design.

Get organized

Now you have an idea of what you’re trying to accomplish, it’s time to get specific. From the big-ticket items like your sofa to the smallest touches like table accessories, it’s time to select the items you want to have in your home. This can get overwhelming, so here are our expert tips for how to stay on track when designing your living room.

Plan your layout

How are people going to move through the space? Where are they naturally drawn to? Where is the light coming from; where will they want to sit; and how will they use tables or other furniture items? Answering all these questions will help you plan the layout of your living room — a sofa in that corner, a coffee table there, for example.

Decide your priorities

Sometimes two desired items just won’t work well together, and you’ll probably also have to make compromises based on your budget. What are the most important things for you in your living room decor? Does it need to prioritize comfort over color? Style over form? Make sure you know what you’re basing your decisions on.

Start big and work down

The biggest items have the most prominence, are often used the most, and are likely to be the most expensive. Start by selecting them: the sofa; armchairs; and other large pieces of furniture. Then fill in with the smaller pieces. These often punch above their weight in terms of style, offering cost-effective ways to impart a pop of color or creative style, with decorative pillows for couches, or unique wall art.

Make it personal

You’re not running a hotel, you’re a unique individual with a style of your own. Remember to let your personality shine through. Family photographs, homemade crafts, favorite books or pictures from your travels all tell your history and have a place in a beautifully curated collection.

Take it further by hand-selecting unique wall art, soft furnishings, table decorations, and cushions that reflect your unique personality. Some companies are set up expressly to give you an outlet for your creativity. At AzulyMar, you can even design your own prints or patterns, and decide what kind of product you want to have them printed on. Our unique or limited-edition print runs also ensure your living room decor will not just look like everyone else’s.

You want your living space to be comfortable and stylish. But you also want it to be your living space, true to your personality and your individual aesthetic. Choosing a niche supplier helps you personalize your interior design and stand out from the crowd.

Practical considerations

Ecommerce offers convenience and the comfort of shopping online from your own home. But you need to feel confident that your carefully selected items will arrive safely and in good condition. It’s also wise to check the returns' policy in advance of purchase — sometimes something that looked perfect on the screen just doesn’t work in reality. You want to be sure, especially for big-ticket items, that you can return them if necessary.

Set realistic expectations for arrival times and completion of the whole project, and keep track of what you’ve ordered and when it’s due to arrive. Finally, be sure to set a budget before you start shopping. It can be helpful to allocate various amounts of money for different categories of items, to be sure you don’t blow the lot on a single piece early on. Smaller items cost a lot less, but they are the finishing touches that bring a space to life. It’s crucial to leave yourself some budget to buy them at the end.

When you’re unsure about an online retailer, it’s always good to read customer reviews and comments. Check their social media pages too, to be sure people aren’t complaining there about poor-quality products, delayed deliveries, or bad customer service.

Sustainability

As an ethical consumer, you’re probably keenly aware of the importance of selecting ethical companies and eco-friendly products. Your purchasing decisions can have a real effect, and contribute to more sustainable practices. Here are some things to keep in mind when shopping sustainably.

Think long term

We should all be consuming less and disposing of fewer items to the trash. Pick out pieces that are well-made and won’t fall apart within months. Select designs that are more classic, standing the test of time and unlikely to look passé next year.

Think unique

By selecting decor that’s unique and personal to you, you’re cementing its place in your life, making it less likely to be discarded. Items with personal meaning and emotional value, like wall art for living rooms that references your travels, will stay with you forever.

Think eco-friendly

Research eco-friendly materials, and ethical production. Check out where the retailer’s products are produced, what they are made from, and whether they can be sustainably recycled.

Think ethical retailers

Look out for online shops with sustainable practices, charitable links, and community action. At AzulyMar, we donate one percent of every sale to Clean Water Action, as part of our ongoing commitment to protecting the world’s water resources. This environmental advocacy group is helping to build a future of clean water and clean energy.

Collaborate with friends and experts

When in doubt, ask friends and family for their thoughts. You can share your mood board with them and discuss your creative process and your plans. This will not only reveal ideas you may have never thought of alone but also enable you to bounce ideas off each other.

Voicing a plan out loud to someone also helps you clarify it in your mind. You might have had a design direction in mind but then realize, when you try to explain it, that it was just a vague idea that you hadn’t thought through.

You can also connect with others online, on social media or other discussion groups dedicated to interior design. It’s often possible to connect with experts and get professional advice at no extra cost. Fellow enthusiasts will likely also share tips and tricks for staying focused and getting discounts, or let you know that this retailer has a sale on, or that one is known for poor-quality fabric. Asking for collaboration is a great way to get insider tips that will help you stay on track with design, budget, and delivery.

Elevate your aesthetic

Create that mood board, and let’s get started.

Find out what your personal style is for your living room decor, with online research, and the help of friends and family. Look for limited-edition or one-of-a-kind home decor items, like those at AzulyMar, to create the perfect cozy home, and define a unique design that captures who you are.