12 ways to jazz up your living room

If your living room features intricate molding, herringbone wood floors or other architectural details, you can put your feet up and relax. At least from a design perspective, you don’t need to do much to make your space shine. But if your living room — like mine — is devoid of those types of niceties, you’ll need to do a bit more heavy lifting when it comes to style.

Just like a blank page can spur writer’s block, a “white box” living room can feel both liberating and restrictive. The options are endless, yet you have no idea where to start.

That’s why I turned to design pros, whose ideas gave me the inspiration I needed to tackle my space.

Yes, your living room might seem blah. But if you put on your rose-colored glasses and squint hard, you might unearth some less obvious treasures. Maybe the space is flooded with light, includes a window with an interesting shape, or boasts high ceilings. Play up those assets by choosing a white or neutral color scheme to highlight the room’s luminosity, painting the trim around the window a bold hue or installing a large chandelier.

Highlight one wall by giving it special treatment, whether it’s with plaster, a dramatic paint color, bold wallpaper or millwork (like shiplap). Or hang large art or an antique mirror. In a client’s living room, Jessica Schuster, of Jessica Schuster Design in New York, installed rustic wood paneling over a wall she’d coated in gray plaster for a moody and modern look.

I’m planning to add a multitiered marble mantel around the fireplace in my living room to impart depth and refinement. I can’t build out the wall, so the overlapping layers of stone should help compensate for the lack of architectural detail in the space. In his Los Angeles home, Orlando Soria, author of “Get It Together!” and host of HGTV’s “Build Me Up,” embellished the fireplace with a mantel he made from four dowels and a pine plank.

Add molding (such as crown or chair-rail), then paint it a contrasting color for a tailored effect. Black trim against white walls brings structure, like punctuation marks on a page. Or if real trim isn’t in your budget, wield paint to lend the illusion of millwork. “Using your trim and ceiling color, paint a 4- or 5-inch border around the upper portion of the wall,” Soria said in an email. “You can also do this around windows and doors.”

Flip through a decorating magazine and you’ll see pricey built-in cabinetry in virtually every living room. Fortunately, you can achieve a similar look without hiring a carpenter. Bookcases don’t have to be custom or built-in, Jess Cooney of Jess Cooney Interiors in western Massachusetts, said in an email. Instead, update free-standing furniture by removing or wallpapering doors or swapping out hardware.

“For a bigger project, consider vintage or antique bookcases, which can be refreshed with paint (solid colors or patterns) and stains,” she wrote. Deep tones, like rich navy, will add depth.

When picking out wallpaper, drapes, upholstered furniture and other decorative items, include a mix of small-, medium- and large-scale patterns. In my living room, I’ve combined medium-patterned wallpaper with pillows featuring large and small patterns. To keep everything unified, I’ve stuck to the same color scheme throughout.

In home design, the ceiling is often forgotten. But if you show it some love, you’ll enhance the overall space. Try adorning it with wallpaper or giving it a lacquered look via high-gloss paint.

“Painting the ceiling a different color, or matching it to the wall color, can add depth and texture,” Schuster said in an email.

Hues across from each other on the color wheel are like a couple with off-the-charts chemistry: You can feel the charge in the air. Leveraging this dynamic, creator, blogger and interior designer Amber Guyton, of Blessed Little Bungalow in Georgia, has chosen high contrast pairings like blue and gold, or green and purple, for her clients’ living rooms.

Although recessed lights are practical, they add nothing when it comes to aesthetics. That’s why you’ll most likely want to include a variety of light sources to help set a mood and impart a sculptural element, Yeley said. Go for a mix, blending floor and table lamps, sconces and pendants.

Ground your space with a statement area rug, said Thea Bloch-Neal of Curated by Thea in Durham, North Carolina. Patterned or vibrantly hued floor coverings can add visual impact and anchor a room, tying the elements together. Think of them as “artwork for the floor,” she said in an email.

Greenery enlivens spaces, as I found with the large, framed moss panel I hung in my living room. As another way to inject vibrancy, try snake, ZZ plants or parlor palms, all of which can thrive in low-light environments, Bloch-Neal said.