How would you decorate this room?

[Kaloobear]

It's a small sitting room. Immediately next to the door on the right is a window that takes up most of the wall (but it's all tiny so the room's still dark). Opposite the door is the longer side of the room which has one of those fake electric fire things wall mounted. The wall opposite the window is teeny and has the door to the kitchen in it, and the fourth wall is an odd shape because it's effectively the side of the staircase-there's a little corner that at the moment has a corner desk in it and a sofa is against the stair bit. Does that make any sense?! TV is under the window and a second sofa is opposite it next to the kitchen door.

Walls are white, carpet is browny/creamy/blah. Not much natural light unfortunately.

My initial thoughts are:

Get rid of the fake fire and put the TV in its place. There is no room for book cases so get someone in to turn that whole wall into shelving (around the TV). We'd lose about 15cm of room but I think it's worth it for storage space.

Large mirror opposite the window and another above the sofa that's on the stair-side wall to try and maximise light.

Blinds rather than curtains to make the window look bigger (does this work or am I making it up?). I'm thinking white wooden ones.

Paint walls in a cool grey-white.

I'd love to rip up the carpet and reveal perfect wooden floorboards but I don't know what's under there. Is it horrifically expensive to have floorboards laid? (We haven't moved in yet so I can't go and have a look!)

Our coffee table is giant so am thinking of replacing it with a smaller footstool style one (with storage)-figure it'll also be safer for DD as she's bound to be moving soon and the current one is all corners.

Bit worried our sofas are too big for the room...fingers crossed not.

Any thoughts? Priorities are make it seem bigger and lighter! Thanks for any help. I have NO eye for decorating.

Oh, and provide room for books. Our current sitting room is twice the size and has floor to ceiling shelves about 6ft wide plus 5 other large book cases.

Bump bump bump...

It generally sounds like a good idea.

In terms of paint, people on here have been recommending Dulux 'Light and space' paint - never tried it myself, and didnt like the colour range when I looked at it, but it might be worth considering.

You could always try to make it look warm and cosy rather than light and bright?

Warm and cosy would go better with our furniture but it's such a small room I think it'd easily feel claustrophobic. I have spent the afternoon considering taking down the wall that's against the staircase which would bring more light in but also mean that the front door opened directly into the sitting room. Hmm. Thanks for the paint tip, will have a look at that.

Oh, I know the sort of layout - it's the same as my old house, I think. The previous owners had knocked through to the staircase, so there was the extra space from that. We had a little porch on the front, so that the front door didn't exactly open into the living room.

We had very pale cream walls, deep red curtains, and a red sofa with cream cushions on. The thing that made a massive difference was replacing the grey carpet with a cream carpet - it was suddenly so much lighter, except that unfortunately a cream carpet is not very practical. Maybe you could go for very pale floorboards?

We rented a house before that where they'd gone for the Bohemian cosy look, with yellow walls, velvet curtains, pine floorboards and lots of comfy furniture and rugs. It did have a lovely atmosphere, actually.

You could alter the area around the front door if that woudl help, either adding a small wall to one side to create a mini porch/hall or even just having a tall screen so the front door doesnt open direvctly into the sitting room. That means you coudl take out the staircase wall.
I agree with Grendel about floorboards rather than carpet and I woudl add lots of low level lighting, perhaps tall paper shades whci hare great for creating soft lighting.

So floorboards-speaking as a total novice here-are they affordable? There's nothing wrong with the carpet per se but I think wooden floors would look much better. Am just worried they'd cost thousands! Hadn't thought about altering the entrance-that's really sensible.

Wait and see as you may have decent boards. If not it shouldnt be too awful to ahve them laid, depends on size of room.
I did try and google pics of what I meant re the entrance but couldnt find any.
Re adding a wall, I meant creating short walls either side of the foor so you separate the door from the room, or of courser you could add a porch with storage for coats etc.

Like your idea of a footstool, sth with storage within would work well, eg
www.ikea.com/gb/en/catalog/products/S69874042/?cid=en%3Epc%3Ego%3Eproducts_search but not in white maybe!

stupid question alert will there definitely be wood under the carpet? It wouldn't just be concrete or anything? I am shocking myself with my utter lack of knowledge about how houses are built...! (Or were built in the 30s I suppose.)
That footstool is exactly the kind of thing I was thinking of-thank you!

Its likely to be wooden floor under carpet but not guaranteed.
Cant you pop round with the agent and have a look before you move in? Or ask the vendors?

I'd really like to go round with a measuring tape but I don't want to be a pain or make them feel under pressure to get out or anything! I might ask the EA whether he can find out though.

I think its fine to ask if you can go round have measure up, quite normal in my experience of buying and selling houses.
Then you can take a peak under the carpet too...

Can you tell we've never done this before?

How funny! When we moved into our 30's house this is what I did to the rather unprepossessing living room:

• covered the long wall with white shelving
• put up white wooden blinds
• painted the walls in a cool grey-white (F&B strong white)
• ripped up the carpet, sanded and varnished the wooden floors underneath
• put in two compact charcoal sofas with legs, so you can see underneath (don't know why, this seems to make the space look bigger)
• got rid of our coffee table; instead we have a side table with storage at the end of one sofa, and a wooden trunk (where we stash toys) at the end of the other.

So great minds think alike . Anyway, I'm very happy with the result. Interestingly, we have a small porch - uPVC and far from beautiful, but at least it means that the sitting room doesn't quite open out onto the street. The adjoining house has kept the original wall separating the living room from the hallway, and I can never decide which is better. Their living room is obviously much smaller, but also cosier. Ours feel spacious in comparison, but also is very much a transit area, and is hard to keep warm as all the heat instantly escapes up the stairs.

Devora that's amazing!! We even have a trunk for toys! Had been thinking about sofas with legs too but there's nothing wrong with the one we've got (plus it's a sofa bed so quite handy) and I'd feel really wasteful getting rid of it. Though I suppose it could go in the spare room instead of a bed...