5 ways to get a minimalist living room

1. Limit your choices Decide on a base colour and 2 or 3 accents. Stay close to this palette with furniture, paint and decorations. The same applies to materials and shapes. Choose a few and stick to them so nothing sticks out! Warm colours and delicate materials soften things up, too.

2. Hide or pride? Go through what you’ve got in the room. Messy stuff and things you don’t love looking at? Put it all away in closed storage so it’s out of sight behind clean, calm doors. Then pick out your treasured things that fit with your chosen colours, materials and shapes. Show them off and keep them out!

3. Use on/off storage Keep your living room activity necessities stored nearby for ‘on’ time and hidden in ‘off’ time. This works for sketching, reading, knitting, surfing, napping, anything. Here, we put art supplies in an open cabinet that’s turned around for tidyness during ‘off’ hours.

4. Group or go solo Create focal points with what’s in the room—from smaller decorations to big furniture. Grouping things together makes the room centered, not scattered. Work with solitaires, too. Don’t be afraid of one piece of art or fabric on a wall. Solitaires add balance and air.

5. Camouflage & contain With any open shelves, make everything blend in as much as you can so it doesn’t distract from the room’s harmony. Stack books according to size and colour or wrap them in similar paper. Use matching storage boxes to contain small objects and potential clutter.