How to decorate a living room in 2024?

The question 'how to decorate a living room' in 2024 will receive many answers. Why? This season, maximalism officially enters a decorative panorama saturated with minimalist suggestions, offering a more colorful, eclectic and personalized perspective on interior design.

But warm, inviting minimalism has not left us either and is increasingly influenced by Mediterranean decoration. More hints of what's to come? Round shapes, natural materials and craftsmanship. Read on and we'll tell you all about it!

With imperfection

The rise of wabi-sabi, an aesthetic philosophy concerned with the beauty of imperfect, impermanent, and unfinished things, left us with a legacy that still endures: showing materials in a natural, raw way, reveling in the texture of their imperfections.

Manuel Delgado, IKEA Interior Design Director,

“Solid wood, high-contrast marble, leather, fibers, natural textiles… The beauty of the surfaces will be achieved through their textures and imperfections.”

He states that this season will continue to triumph with bare organic materials.

Westwing agrees:

“Natural materials like light wood, raw wood, porcelain and pink marble will be very fashionable. Also in fabrics like organic cotton, which we will see in cushions and curtains, or sheepskin, which we will see in armchairs and poufs.”

Here the floor is made of handmade zellige tiles and most of the furniture chosen is local, traditional Sardinian, very agricultural, made of rope, wood, straw… The materiality of the marble and handcrafted pieces also shines through in the design.

According to Delgado, while terrazzo and cement will continue to be trendy, especially in minimalist spaces, ceramics and clay, which will enter the home with handmade pieces, will also be among the must-haves.

“The preference for locally produced, hand-made and meticulously prepared products that humanize and add personality, work with an innovative spirit from tradition will increase.”

And he's right: not only has Contain opened an online store with honest, manufactured and Mediterranean products, but even a major publisher like Zara Home has launched a ceramics collection from Fajalauza, the popular beauty of Granada!

Of course, we’ll continue to see more and more publishers using recycled materials. “They add value and create a positive, environmental impact,” Delgado says.

Natural and Mediterranean minimalism

In connection with all this, we can say that in 2025, minimalist and sustainable spaces will continue to shine, decorated with bare furniture made of organic materials. According to Delgado, the trend in this case is,

“various ranges of whites, warm accents and shades of ochre, grey, lavender”

It is characterized by the preference for light and neutral tones such as.

“Minimalism will be very much in fashion and ‘less is more’ will be the adage for all aspects of interior design. The key is to create spaces that feel spacious with harmonious furniture and the right decoration to complement them.”

explains Kave Home.

In fact, in this style of living room, ornamentation is almost always unnecessary and beauty is achieved through the sculptural nature and materiality of the few selected pieces. Therefore, Mediterranean decoration, which very much exemplifies this trend, is on the rise: natural and local materials, bare surfaces; a friendly and functional minimalism where nothing is superfluous and everything serves; a quiet atmosphere where light plays an important role?

Recommended: Furniture Trends 2025 – Home Decorating Tips

The house of designer Gabriel Escámez is always a reference in this sense. Rationalist, artisanal, simple, rough and local, his house has a unique personality thanks to the careful selection of each piece.

‘Exposed’ surfaces are also on the rise, such as the cement in Escámez’s house or, more radically, the old walls that members of Buc Arquitectura kept intact in a peculiar house in Mallorca. The use of natural finishes such as clay or lime mortar is increasing, while cement-effect paints are also a trend. The use of furniture is also increasing, as we see in the shelving area of ​​this beautiful French holiday home.

Eclectic maximalism

As extremes touch each other, this year too it seems we will enjoy increasingly maximalist and eclectic living rooms, where the personality of those who live in them will dominate. This is a trend that began to take shape at the end of 2025 and is finally taking on a bolder form and is being pursued in more than one project.

“Vintage maximalism is going to be huge, with lots of colour, warmth, antiques and eclectic touches. I think in the age of social media (which seems to have peaked?) we’re all looking to put our own stamp on interiors. We’re starting to look for unknown, anonymous pieces to set our personal spaces apart from the crowd,”

” interior designer Tali Roth tells AD USA's Tali Roth.

A taste for the ornate, for color, for art, for plants, for decorative patterns, for objects of sentimental value, for the accumulation of textures, is evident in accounts with millions of followers, such as The Jungalow, a brand by designer Justina Blakeney, which has been featured in the pages of the magazine’s international editions this year.

He told AD Spain:

“I have always loved creating from a good mix of objects from different times, cultures and histories. The environment becomes eclectic, enthusiastic, lively and unique.”

Interior designer Iñigo Iriarte has just shown how well this style works when it comes to providing identity and charisma in an apartment in San Sebastián sewn from pieces with tradition and character dating back to 1900. “Not everything chosen has to be expensive,” says the interior designer.

“The economic elements can be reused or manipulated in a way that approximates the effect we are looking for.”

“We have emerged from the pandemic with great energy and are eager to show it to the world. This leads us to an explosion of extremes, from minimalism to maximalism, reflecting the search for calm and personal balance. The latter explores the need to give personality to the spaces we live in, to humanize them and make them feel our own, to mix styles and add identities without limiting ourselves. So we will see from the most balanced calm, inspired by nature, in search of peace and tranquility, to the most harsh and strange confusion, mixing patterns, colors and textures.”

He summarizes IKEA by saying:

In fact, the brand surprised us with an explosion of geometry and color in March. It looks set to continue its push towards these extremes in 2025: “Large prints with organic motifs, such as palm trees or vegetables, will be used to create colorful spaces with a certain retro feel that will also be a trend.

Colour accents will be reintroduced, bringing a new vibrancy and joy to all the rooms of the house, with a palette of very bright warm colours: fuchsia, orange, peach, coral, yellow… contrasting with the classic green, the big colour of spring in accessories and fashion.”

Westwing adds:

“Olive green will stand out in unexpected objects such as sofas or poufs, as well as in minimalist-style vases and even wallpapers. Like brown and all its varieties, colors that take us back to nature will triumph when mixed with raw materials such as wood.”

“The year 2025 is characterized by deep colors to add personality to rooms. We are moving away from bright and pastel colors and moving towards more vibrant colors and personal tones that will bring life to homes. Dark-surfaced furniture such as walnut will also come to the fore with metallic surfaces that will add an industrial touch.”

says Kave Home. And they're right: painting the living room in dark colors is a growing trend.

When it comes to prints, the good news is that Bloomsbury flowers are on the rise, as Westwing tells us. The bohemian circle of painters, writers and thinkers who congregated in the West End neighbourhood continue to exert a growing influence on the design world a century later.

And be warned: after the boom in second-hand clothing, which has led even major international brands like Zara or H&M to set up resale initiatives, just as IKEA did with its furniture, it’s no surprise that, as Delgado points out, there has also been a resurgence of taste for vintage in the world of interior design.

Of course, this is a motto that has always been kept alive by great designers, but it is now more than possible that it has become a global choice. For example, it has been adopted in one of Studio Akademos’s latest projects: a Parisian house with a retro feel, where the good use of colour blocks and the clever choice of materials and decorative objects from other times stand out.

Curvy is the most preferred trend

Because the Bold trend is not about to give up its reign, on the contrary:

“Round silhouettes will be the absolute heroes of 2025. We will find them in interior and exterior furniture as well as in decoration. These organic shapes bring calmness, peace and extra comfort”

says Kave Home.

IKEA agrees:

“Curved and organic shapes will be fashionable in order to seek any connection with nature and to create comfortable spaces. This will have two aspects: for minimalist spaces, these silhouettes will create calm and harmonious spaces. For the maximalist and colorist trend, curved furniture will be important in creating rooms with multiple personalities, since pieces without edges give a sense of movement and dynamism, creating more intimate, feminine, delicate and ergonomic environments.”

We find the home in Madrid of the founder of LA Studio, who combines the vintage trend with Bold in its most maximalist and showy aspect.

The living room features a dining table and sofas designed by the firm itself; a mirrored lamp from the 1960s purchased from Rastro; a Standard chair designed by Jean Prouvé for Vitra; and cushions by Jaume Plensa, arranged by the Rug Company and purchased from Bsb and Arcano.

Finally, we can appreciate in another house that, in its most minimalist aspect, is a work of art: that designed by creative director Iebele van der Meulen in Mallorca together with architect Tomeu Esteva: a design temple that is a tribute to the color yellow.