How to Decorate A Long, Narrow Living Room

Decorating a long narrow living room can be tough. Check out how I’ve decorated my living room space for the best layout ever!

The most challenging part of my home is that it is very long. It almost looks like a townhome because of its narrowness. I would love to have a different floor layout but with houses in our area being the highest in the country (my little home is worth nearly $2 mil!), I’m just grateful that I own a piece of property in Vancouver.

How can you decorate a challenging long living space? Let me show you how I’ve done it.

To begin with, let’s take a look at the original floorplan of my house.

As you can see below, the living room and dining room were one space before the renovation. We turned the family room into the new dining to make one larger living room.

The original floorplan before renovations

The kitchen became larger. The eating area and kitchen became one large kitchen with one large island. We added more cabinets (on the left) as well that extended out into the old dining room just up to the window.

The living room now had more space but the challenge was now how to decorate it.

the challenging new floorplan

Here is the new floorplan of my main floor.

3D Renders

I also created some 3D renderings of my main floorplan for fun.

The couch is not directly in front of the fireplace as you can see in the floorplan so the TV and cabinet went to the left side of the fireplace. I liked that anyway as I don’t like TVs above fireplaces. We had a TV over one of our fireplaces in our old house and it’s too high for viewing, in my opinion.

I wanted to create another seating area to break up the space and to also have another spot to relax away from the TV. I had a chandelier hung in front of the window area to differentiate that space.

how I decorated the living room previously

In the past, I’ve always had two arm chairs in this area.

Here is what this area looked like with the two chairs previously.

before

BEFORE

The sectional was in front of the TV and it tucked into that corner where the wall juts out so it has only one space to sit.

That wall houses a lot of essential wires and our sewer line to the ensuite bathroom so it could not be moved in the renovation (believe me, I tried to convince my contractor).

Here’s the floorplan again to show you how that short wall juts out.

The cabinet that used to be on that short wall has now switched spots with an armchair.

BEFORE

opening up the space

The chair now extends the living room area and there isn’t some awkward sectional part that lands in direct line with the TV (which made it awkward for anyone sitting on that end of the couch to watch TV).

This really opens up the whole space! The living room now looks larger instead of stopping half way in the middle of the room.

We removed that corner section of the sectional and moved the section on the right with the rest of the sofa so now it looks like a regular sofa/couch instead of a sectional.

You can see that split/line between the two furniture pieces of the couch but for now it works for us before we invest in a new couch for the living room.

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And where is the corner section? Unfortunately, it’s in the newly renovated garage! We have to keep it so we can sell it all as one unit in the near future.

I think this layout is the best layout for this long, narrow living room space, don’t you think?

Sources:

• wall color – Simply White by Benjamin Moore
• Cameron Roll Armed couch with slipcovers in Premium Performance Basketweave
• gold and marble coffee table
• deconstructed armchair
• artwork – Morning Mist
• vintage rug – Pacific Rug Gallery
• throw pillows
• TV/entertainment cabinet – smaller version of this

Make sure to pin it for later!

click in case you missed:

How to Add Texture to Complete a Room

How to Use a Color Wheel for Decorating