Sometimes, your living room might feel so small and cluttered, especially when you have too much stuff you want to display. However, with the right storage solutions, it’s possible to turn this around, making it feel spacious, neat, warmer, and welcoming.
Whether you want some space for shelving your books, some vintage items collection, or even entertainment materials, a little creativity can help you get the most from your space.
Read on to discover some unique living room storage ideas you can use, especially when moving to a new home.
Maximize on the Alcoves
If your living room has alcoves, it might be the best time to make the most of them. This is a prime storage space in your living room that can be used to hold shelves for your books, decorations, or other items.
Floating shelves always take the day in maximizing alcoves. And below your beautifully designed shelves, you can also build a closed storage unit to store even more items, helping you to utilize all your living room’s floor space.
Remember, you not only want to make your room feel spacious but also neat and stunning.
Work Around Corners
Hitting a corner in your living room doesn’t signify the end of your storage space. In fact, it should offer even more opportunities. For instance, you can design custom shelving hugging your walls to provide additional space.
And, if you don’t want to dent the walls, especially if you live in a rental house, there are numerous unique ready-made shelves specially made for corners.
This will undoubtedly offer more storage space and give your living room an even more charming look.
Alternatively, you can opt for butt single wall shelves on your walls at right angles.
Custom Wall Unit
If you are looking for stylish living room storage, a customized floor-to-ceiling shelving unit works perfectly. The extra space will help you store items you’d otherwise have placed on the tables or other useable surfaces in your living room.
This means that you’ve not only dealt with the storage space issue but also with decluttering the living room, leaving it neat and spacious. A custom wall unit also gives you an excellent place to display your decorative items to help add more charm to your space.
Place Mirrors behind Shelves
For those of us living in small apartments, this might just be the clever living room storage trick you need. While it might not actually add storage space in your living room, it creates an illusion and a feeling of a larger space.
Placing mirrors behind shelves augments the light in your living room, making alcoves appear brighter and wider. It also offers a stunning reflection of the shelves, giving your room a unique look.
Play with Color Display
If you didn’t know, the way you coordinate colors can make your space feel larger or smaller. For instance, painting your shelves in a similar color to the wall behind them makes the shelves recede, creating an impression of a larger space.
Also, the type of colors you use for your living room determines how big it looks. Lighter colors are an excellent choice when looking to make your space feel bigger. This is because they reflect more light, helping your space to seem more open.
For optimal effect, choose neutrals such as off-white, light grays, beige, blues, etc. Avoid dark shades as they absorb more light, making that room seem even smaller.
Design Vertical Bookshelves
For some living rooms, built-in storage or floating shelving isn’t an option due to space constraints. When this is the case, you can solve the storage problem by vertical book towers.
These are clever living room storage ideas as they consume minimum space but can hold quite a number of books. Also, they are relatively inconspicuous.
If you place these vertical shelves well, they can also help add beauty to your space.
Use Double-Duty Furniture
Furniture takes the largest space in your living room. For this reason, picking double-duty furniture might come in handy in solving your storage issues.
For example, with the large sectional sofas’ comeback in most homes, you can pick one that comes with storage compartments. This way, the same couch can offer seating comfort and storage space at the same time.
Another excellent example of such kind of double-duty furniture is a storage coffee table. Pick one with cubbies or drawers to help add your living room’s storage space. You can use this space to store many items, including books, devices, or other small items.
Also, with the right coffee table, you could be adding some appeal to your space. This means you’ll have tackled three issues with a single piece of furniture.
Using a Dresser for Storage
Living room storage pieces need not be overly bulky or unattractive. Using a sleek, low-profile dresser or cabinet in one of your living room’s corners is an excellent illustration of this.
The dresser can be quite useful in stacking away most of the items that you don’t want to display. Add color to your new storage compartment by dressing it up with your favorite tabletop décor.
This is one of the simplest but unique storage ideas living room designers can use.
Using Window Seats
A window seat is not only a brilliant living room storage solution but also a piece of decorative furniture for your room. Window seats work perfectly to include hidden storage in your living room and offer an ideal place to watch that beautiful sunset from your house.
They are instrumental in living room spaces, being used as home offices or playrooms. Such spaces have a lot of clutter that might need to be packed away, and window seats offer just the right type of storage.
Depending on the type of storage you want (hidden storage or an easy access one), you can build easy-access doors at the front of the seat or a cushion-covered, lift-up lid. Also, including shelves or compartments within your window seat could facilitate easy storage.
