20 Genius Apartment Living Room Design Ideas

Conventional wisdom holds that you should float living room furniture away from walls (to improve traffic flow, create intimacy and so on). That’s sometimes great advice — but in a space like this one, a massive, angular sectional suits the far corner so well that it looks custom. (It also happens to improve traffic flow and create intimacy quite effectively, we’d say.)

Tall bookshelves with no-nonsense right angles are heavy hitters in apartments for good reason: their geometry maximizes storage. That said, more fanciful pieces, like this one, accommodate a respectable number of books and creates a sense of movement and lightness that a traditional stack of shelves just can’t match.

Sometimes a massive wall of built-ins or an entertainment center just isn’t in the cards for a small space. This living room features a simple, white Parsons desk that holds a turntable below the wall-mounted TV, and proves to be a stylish solution for maximizing square footage in a smaller space.

No yard? No problem. Invest in large-scale greenery — the bigger, the better — to bring the outdoors in (and add color and texture to your living room). A choice like this red aglaonema is one of the easiest houseplants to grow, as it thrives in low light and requires minimal care. If even minimal care feels like a chore, know that realistic faux plants are having a big moment now, too.