21 eclectic living room ideas for things you want to keep

There is usually one piece that makes a decorating plan awkward. A chair in a colour you would never choose for the walls, a large dark cabinet, a picture that is emphatically its own person. You like it. Everything you have saved on your phone seems to require it to leave.

I would start by giving that piece a fair hearing. A room assembled around one narrow idea can be surprisingly intolerant of the things that matter to its owner. Mixing styles offers more freedom, provided you pay attention to scale, the places people sit and the differences you actually enjoy. Keeping everything is not compulsory either.

These twenty-one illustrated concepts try the mixture in different settings. They are design studies, not documented homes or evidence of the furniture’s age. Look for the decision that would help your own room. It might be a stronger wall colour; it might simply be allowing a very modern sofa to sit beside the cabinet you already have.

The rust chair is a good reason to keep the sofa pale. Against the blue walls, the two seats do quite different things: one draws you towards it, the other gives you a broad place to settle. The television remains part of this familiar bay-windowed arrangement. If borrowing the palette, look from the seats as well as the door. The strongest colour need not sit directly in front of your eyes all evening.

That broad dark cabinet would be easy to blame for making a room feel heavy. Here, the pale seating and relatively simple table give its outline somewhere to show. I would try that change of company before replacing a substantial piece I liked. The cabinet in the concept has an older-looking finish; its age cannot be read from the image. At home, the reason for keeping one might be its storage, its construction or simply the pleasure of seeing it each morning.

Terracotta lets the patterned chair and leather seat find something in common without making them twins. Their warmer tones meet the wall colour at different strengths, while the pale curved sofa remains distinct. The useful experiment is to put a large colour sample behind the piece that currently seems out of place. If the relationship improves, the furniture may have been waiting for a different wall, rather than a matching companion.

The pale sofa is easier to see against aubergine than it would be against cream. Its curves and cushions become part of the decoration without gaining a pattern. After dark, the lamps give particular seats and surfaces light, leaving some of the wall darker. Try that from your usual place before deciding the paint is too much. Keep enough light for the page and the route through; atmosphere is less appealing when you cannot find your glass.

The veined stone table is quite assertive enough for the middle of this room. Green upholstery, a mustard chair and an open wood-and-leather seat gather around it, each with a different outline. Through the arch, the dining room offers a second arrangement instead of repeating the first one. A view into another room can hold plenty of variety when the doorway gives it a clear frame. There is no need to make both spaces obey the same furniture list.

There is no prize for designing a sitting room nobody can comfortably watch television in. Here, the pale sofa faces the screen, the sage wall gives the equipment a place and the rust chair offers another way to sit. I would keep that straightforwardness. Put the principal viewers in comfortable positions, check the screen height from those seats and give the cables and equipment somewhere suitable to go. Books and plants can then belong to the room without being recruited to conceal its main activity.

A sectional, a leather lounge chair and a textured occasional seat offer different ways of occupying a generous room. That is more interesting than varying the furniture simply to avoid a matching suite. Someone can stretch out; someone else can sit more upright. The table needs to serve the positions people actually choose. If a seat has no reachable surface or light, changing its fabric will not make it a better place to spend the evening. In a narrower room, compare the depth of the furniture before committing to several different seats.

The glossy burgundy table gives the teal velvet a surprisingly sharp neighbour. The grained timber top introduces a third surface, rougher in appearance and broader in scale. Much of the pleasure here would disappear if everything had the same smooth finish, even with the colours unchanged. When a plain apartment seems short of detail, compare the materials already at hand before adding ornament: the table edge, the upholstery and the thing you reach for beside the chair.

The red lacquered chair is the piece I would be tempted to keep even if it complicated every subsequent decision. Its precise colour and outline stand apart from the curved pale sofa, while dark cabinets and ceramics stop the room relying entirely on new-looking shapes. There is no need to manufacture a history for them. If you own an older piece, let its actual marks remain part of the choice; if you buy new, choose something you enjoy now.

A patterned chair can be a relief in a room that is beginning to agree with itself too politely. Here it has a pale sofa behind it, a darker cabinet further back and a green stone table nearby. The other objects remain visible, but the chair has enough clear space to be itself. Try moving a favourite patterned piece before deciding it is too much. Sometimes the objection belongs to the clutter immediately beside it.

The rug introduces rust and blue beneath mustard upholstery. The furniture takes only part of that palette; the striped chair adds another pattern at a smaller scale. I would resist extracting a cushion colour from every part of the rug. A textile is allowed to contain colours that go no further. Keep enough of it visible to enjoy the design, then check that its edges and the furniture leave a useful way through the room.

These shelves have space for objects of unequal importance: books you use, a picture you like, a bowl that is simply convenient to put there. Their uneven sizes make the wall interesting. At home, begin with the contents before buying objects for the gaps. Leave a shelf where an unfinished book can be put down without disturbing an arrangement. The calm seating makes this a room to read in, which is a more convincing reason for the books than colour-coding their spines.

The cobalt modular sofa is thoroughly modern, and the cornice survives the encounter quite happily. Pale gloss and chrome make other clear shapes below the older room’s tall doors and mouldings. This is permission to separate two questions: what deserves care in the building, and what you want to sit on. A sofa does not need to resemble the architecture to suit its proportions. Give it enough room, and keep the details you value visible.

The broad timber table could take a board game without requiring someone to hold the cards on their lap. That is a useful reason for its size. It also brings the sofa, leather chair and woven seat towards the same centre. Before choosing something this substantial, try the passage around it with people sitting down. If everybody has to turn sideways to leave, the table is collecting more floor than the game needs.

The red chair and red lamp are enough to make the pale room lively. Their different heights stop the colour feeling confined to one corner, while dark timber gives it another strong surface nearby. The chair need not announce a plan to acquire more red things. Sometimes a colour is most enjoyable when the room leaves you a clear view of the one piece that made you choose it.

The larger artwork has loose bands of colour; the smaller one has crisper geometry. They reward different kinds of looking, which is a good reason to hang them together. Their warm notes meet the rust sofa without requiring identical frames or a single art style. Place pictures where each can still be read. A group can be related through subject, scale or your own attachment to it; a perfectly consistent palette is only one possibility.

In this room, the leather chair catches light along its smoother edges while the timber table shows finer changes across the grain. The blue upholstery is another kind of surface again. You can get quite a lot of variation from materials before introducing a new colour. Compare samples near the seat where you will see them, particularly if the room’s daylight arrives from one side. The same finish can look much flatter from the opposite direction.

I like the yellow stool because it is slightly ridiculous beside that very respectable fireplace. Its twisted shape interrupts the straight mouldings and striped chair without making the whole room a novelty display. Pink walls and blue upholstery give it strong company. This sort of piece should make you pleased to see it; buying something eccentric merely because a room needs character is a rather joyless way to be playful.

Cane leaves little glimpses through the chairs, the leather has a broader continuous surface, and the teal sectional is the largest upholstered mass. Against coral walls, the differences are easy to see. Arches, beams and generous light give this imagined setting its Mediterranean character. Borrow the material mixture if it appeals, but judge the colours in your own room. The brightness of this illustration cannot tell you what the same teal will do beside a shaded window.

The ochre sofa sits low beneath tall arched windows. I would keep that change of scale: the architecture can be formal while the seat invites someone to put their feet up. Green upholstery and contemporary art give the old-fashioned fireplace a present-day setting. Nothing requires a ceremony simply because the ceiling is high. Place the furniture for a comfortable conversation, then enjoy having so much room above it.

The view from the dining end makes the living room feel like somewhere you could wander into after eating. Ochre upholstery, an open cane chair and a dark cabinet remain distinct within the oxblood walls. That is the arrangement I would want to preserve as other things arrived: useful seats, a clear approach and enough difference for a new picture to join in. A room that accommodates an unfamiliar object is easier to keep enjoying than one whose last matching piece has completed it. For another arrangement with separate places to eat and sit, see The long room with two lives.

Before replacing the chair that seems to fit nowhere, put it beside something different. Move a picture near it, turn it towards the sofa, or leave it a clear wall. It may still be wrong for the room. But if you find yourself wanting to sit there, the decorating plan can make a little room for that.