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How to give your living room the industrial look

Let’s face it: there are many ways to style your living room, and everyone undoubtedly has individual tastes and styles in mind. If you’re unsure what to do for your living room, have you considered going for the industrial or ‘warehouse’ look?


The industrial look living room is surprisingly easy and affordable to achieve, and it’s a style you can apply to any size of living room. With that in mind, here’s a few pointers to help you get started achieving this fabulous new look for your home’s living room:


Expose Your Brickwork

In most houses, the living room walls won’t have any exposed brickwork as they’ll get covered up by plasterboard, plaster, and paint or wallpaper. As you’re going to achieve the industrial look in your living room, you need to rip all of that out!


It might seem like a scary prospect, but the results are worth it. Once you’ve removed your plasterboard and plaster, you need to clean up the brickwork as it’ll be very dusty and dirty. You can do this one wall to make a feature wall or all your living room walls.

Next, you can seal the bricks using PVA, a glue that you’ve probably used when you were at school! PVA is also useful in the construction industry as plasterers use it to seal brick walls before applying plaster to them.


PVA is cheap to buy and easy to apply. Of course, you should make sure all brick and mortar surfaces are spotless and free of dirt and dust. Once you use the PVA, it will leave a slight sheen but otherwise won’t affect the look.


Remove Your Carpet

Next, you need to remove your carpet to expose the floorboards underneath. If your floorboards are looking worse for wear, you can hire a floor sander to rejuvenate them. Once you’ve done that, you should apply a varnish to the surface to help protect it.

You can then buy an attractive rug to put over the floorboards, ideally placed in a central part of your living room. Exposed floorboards will look great in your living room and enhance your industrial look.


Buy the Right Furniture

Now it’s time to upgrade some of your furniture to achieve the industrial living room look fully. Start by searching for tasteful mirrored furniture for living room interiors, such as a mirrored coffee table and TV unit.


Next, look for accessories like up-lighters made from upcycled industrial lampshades or a sideboard made of metal. You could also invest in industrial-style ceiling lampshades or LED bulbs that have a vintage look to them.


Go for Neutral Colours

Lastly, any furnishings you choose or furniture like sofas should be in neutral or ‘earthy’ colours like brown and beige. The same also applies to any walls that you’ve decided not to take back to the bare brickwork.


If you’re unsure about colours or colour schemes, it’s worth checking out a colour scheme generator online for some inspiration.






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