Scandinavian Living Room Design Ideas
Scandinavian living rooms are known for their clean lines, calming palettes, and inviting feel — a style that’s both effortlessly chic and easy to achieve. With its focus on simplicity, functionality, and warmth, this look works beautifully in modern homes of all sizes. If you’re ready to embrace this aesthetic in your own space, check out the ideas below for inspiration.
Choose a Distinct Scandi Style
Not every Scandinavian living room style looks the same. There are rustic Scandinavian living room designs, minimalist Scandinavian living room designs, and boho Scandinavian living room designs as well as designs that spring from the various Scandinavian countries.
Danish design tends to be more modern and sleek and Swedish design incorporates more folk art elements into its design. Some Scandinavian styles will fit your lifestyle and work better for you than others.
Cozy Focal Point
What better place to get cozy in the living room than in front of a fireplace or wood stove. To create your own warm Scandinavian living room from scratch, be sure to include a fireplace or wood burning stove in your design. Add a basket of firewood near the fireplace for easy restocking.
Open Floor Plan
Many Scandinavian designed homes have open floor plans with the common areas like the living room, dining room, and kitchen all connected. They are located in a centralized location that is accessible to everyone in the home.
An open floor plan offers positives and negatives. Highlight the positives by making each area distinct and defined. Use area rugs and unique light fixtures to create visual separation between each area. Tie the areas together by using a common color palette and furniture style.
Base of Light Neutrals
Scandinavia is famous for their gray skies and long dark winter days. Because of this, their design tends to favor light interior colors to reflect all the natural light from the outdoors as well as give the home a cheerful look.
Begin with a base of light neutral tones like warm whites and grays. White, cream, or light beige walls are a great way to get an authentic Scandi look. Also, add light foundational pieces like your sofa and accent chairs. If you have small children or pets and want to avoid white furniture, use gray or beige from light to darker tones. If you don’t know where to start with finding good neutrals, take a look at Benjamin Moore’s Hygge Paint Color palette for inspiration.
Add Earthy Color Highlights
If you are someone who loves color, feel free to add pops of color to your Scandinavian design living room. Colors inject warmth and unique personality into your home space.
Focus on colors that reflect the natural world like burnt sienna, slate blue, forest green, and earthy brown. You can choose to use washed out colors for more muted interest or deep saturated tones. Get a head start by taking a look at Sherwin Williams’ Rejuvenation color palette or Benjamin Moore’s Cozy Cabin color palette. Both of these have rich earth toned palettes that blend together in a seamless way.
Add Different Textures
Neutral colored furniture and decor are vital in Scandinavian style living rooms, but they are never one dimensional. Instead, even when these rooms have a neutral color scheme, the layered textures throughout Scandinavian designs create deep interest.
Focus on natural textures like wool, cotton, wood, stone, leather, wicker, rattan, and jute to get the most authentic Scandinavian style living room. This means incorporating wool throw blankets, leather chairs, wood furniture and decor, and stone accents to create interesting focal points and comfy seating.
Less is More
Scandinavian design follows the mantra that “less is more”. This means that you should avoid superfluous furniture and accents where possible and focus on furniture that is needed to create a pleasing flow and look within the room.
If possible, buy furniture that is the best quality that you can afford. This will ensure that you can keep the pieces that you love from year to year. Also, don’t feel the need to squeeze the room with Scandinavian living room furniture but feel comfortable with the spaces in between.
Natural and Artificial Lighting
Scandinavia has a long and dark winter season. Capturing all the available natural light and layering warm artificial light inside is one of the best ways to create a bright but cozy interior.
Keep your window coverings to a minimum or do away with them altogether. If you need a curtain for privacy, use light colored natural fabric curtains and make sure that you can pull them away from the window to expose the complete window.
Make sure that your modern Scandinavian living room has ample sources of layered artificial lighting including lamps, overhead light and task lighting.
Floor Features
It is hard to create a snug and pleasant room if there is a cold floor. Most Scandinavian living rooms do not have wall-to-wall carpet, they favor wood floors. Choose a light color wood to get the most authentic Scandinavian look. You can also paint your floors white to brighten the room.
Scandinavian design favors large area rugs. Add a neutral wool rug or layer it with a jute rug to give the room more texture. You can also use the rug choice as an opportunity to inject some warm color into your living room.
Statement Feature
Scandinavian design came of age during the modernist era, so it works well with modern and mid-century furniture and decor. Choose a piece of furniture, lighting, or decor that has a unique style for modern Scandinavian living room designs with a contemporary edge.
Natural Decor and Greenery
Scandinavian living room decor includes items found in nature. Display plants and cut greenery along with bowls of pine cones, fruit, flowers, seashells, bare branches to add extra texture and soften the sharp edges of the living room design.
Add Contrast
In order to create a more dramatic Scandinavian living room design, add some contrast with dark neutrals and with wood. This can give your room a more custom look. Paint your wall with two contrasting colors or add some natural wood paneling.